“Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans (and widows) in their distress…” James 1:27
In a meditation of what this means, John Piper tells us, “Face it. A few kids are cute, but most street kids will be thankless, rude, dirty, diseased, scar-faced, shifty-eyed, lice-infested, suspicious, smelly, and have rotten teeth.” The mystery to how these children got to this place in their short life may never be understood in whole but we can get a pretty good idea if we understand where some of them have been.
Most of them were born into this world without ever having a sense of belonging to anyone. Imagine, the feeling we get from home. Home doesn’t have to be the actual place you live but more so the feelings of home. For me it’s a comfy bed and a fluffy blanket, a hot shower and a clean towel, the freedom of food and health, and opportunity for love and peace that you can’t find anywhere else. It’s the people that make home just that for me. The consistency of family and friends and even the consistency of the barista at the local coffee shop all give the feeling of home.
For these kids there is NO home. There is no person or people that give them the sense of home that we yearn for, even as adults, after being on vacation or trip away from it for a while. They are constantly shifted from home to home for any number of reasons and most of the time for no reason at all. As soon as they are settled the carpet gets taken out from under them yet again.
If we gave our time, money, effort and love for the payoff of an investment, we would burn out after only a week. If we did this because we believed that there is a way of changing these little ones in five short days, we wouldn’t come back year after year. The truth is that it takes so much more than what we are humanly able to give. The results of what we do are not up to us, which does not take away our responsibility but essentially makes it greater. When we grasp that we do what we do with hope for future grace, we will be able to comfort and love the ones who are least likely to thank us. For the reward is much greater when we can give with no expectation of reward aside from a proliferating love.
