But it wasn't just Africa. It was also a place called City of Hope. It was also a community at a small Christian school in southern California. It was a small group of believers gathered together on Sunday nights at six o'clock. It was a girl who wouldn't take no for an answer. It was a man who saw past the image. It was a God who loved me far before I was ever born into this broken world.
Kids are just kids. Everywhere you go. They look about the same wherever you are. They act about the same. They laugh, they cry, they usually want more than they have.
There are three girls who are a little different than ordinary children. They are miracles. They trade their shoes for a piece of gum that has already been chewed. They get their heads shaved once a year to check for skin diseases and to make it easier to care for. They eat the bones of chicken because they're hungry, and nobody tells them not to. They can't remember ever having driven in a car. They live in a dormitory with 47 other children. They are daughters of a King yet have no earthly father. They are orphans. Faith. Hope. Isabel.
One thing that I have learned from my time in Africa and in hospitals and churches and schools is that people are broken. Everywhere I go. It doesn't matter if I travel 42 hours through three continents to get to them or walk five minutes to the nearest coffee shop. It doesn't matter if I work in a cancer ward or minister in my local church. People live shattered and tattered lives. And God is on the move to redeem what is bound and broken. God is at work to renew and restore and bring life to a dead and stagnant world. His Spirit is giving life. He is giving life to the orphans in Livingstone, Zambia. He is giving life to my brother in the room above me. He is breathing His life into the widow who lives alone in her mud hut. As she breaks down trees and gathers wood to build the kitchen fire, she is being renewed by the same Spirit that is removing the weight of depression from a soul which has been bound for a lifetime.
It isn't always necessary to spend $3500 to see how the Spirit is at work in our world. But sometimes it takes just that to get perspective and to believe that He is alive. That He is powerful. More powerful than I thought when I first believed.
Africa has ruined me. Faith has shown me how rich I truly am. She has shown me by helping me to realize how rich she is as well. Hope has shown me how much life is inside of me. She has shown me by giving me a glimpse of the miracle of her own life. Isabel has taught me how to writhe in pain. She has shown me by the way her crushed spirit caused her to roll around in the dirt and whimper.
I once learned to cry when I watched the body of a young mother and wife shake and slowly grow limp as the cancer that had raged inside of her body for over half of her life won. I cried as I sang songs of hope over her life and over her family. I cried as I thought about her daughter who would soon be motherless.
I once learned to cry when I realized how my ignorance and fear had caused pain in the hearts of my sisters and brothers, so deeply that I could never do anything to undo the damage. I learned that depravity is so deep within me. And I learned that redemption is a miracle. A miracle that is being displayed daily wherever the Spirit of the Lord is.
I didn't used to know how to cry. And because of Africa, I have learned to cry for those who don't know how to express the pain that is blinding them from the hope of redemption. Because of City of Hope, I have learned that God is good in the midst of death, and I have learned to weep over the lives which pass without hope.
There is hope for the motherless and for the fatherless. There is hope for the widows. Hope for empty wealth which pervades my home. There is hope, and there is life.
Faith has found it. Hope has found it. Isabel has found it. Linah. Geianna. Haven. Richard. Liz. Marla. We are the richest. We have found the treasure of Jesus. Or, rather, He has found us. And, though we are broken, we are being made new daily. One day we will be completely whole. Praise God.
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