Visiting the Home of 9 Orphans

We are told that the host wants to end our visit with a prayer. I hear, “Let us pray.”  So, with eyes closed and head bowed I listen as a voice of fear and despair begins to speak to God.  Though I do not understand the language being spoken, I do feel the desperation in the voice.  I know that whatever the words, I am in agreement with this fellow member of the Body of Christ who is suffering.  As her shaky voice of prayers turns into heart wrenching pleads and cries I begin to break. 

  

The voice is that of a very elderly woman who is watching 9 orphans starve in her home.  These children are her grandchildren who have tragically ended up in her care because of the death of their parents.  As their provider, the grandmother now has to live with the torment of knowing that she is the one failing them.  She is the one who is unable to provide enough food to sustain them.  She is the one responsible.  Without the ability to work because of her frail condition, how can she alleviate this crisis situation?  Throughout our home visit she humbly asks over and over for food, confessing the agony she is enduring as she watches her orphaned grandchildren go without food.

The prayer ends and all 10 of us visiting Umoja representatives begin walking to the door to leave.  I cannot believe my eyes!  My heart is breaking.  I want to scream, “What are we doing?!  Wait…Stop!  We can’t just walk out of here as if this sister in Christ did not just reveal her very grave need to us!!  Are we really just going to walk out of here as if we are leaving a church service, or a meeting, or a damn grocery store?!”  I second guess myself by wondering if this reaction is the Holy Spirit’s conviction, or just my naïve eyes to a grave society? 

Then, I hear someone tell the woman to trust God because He will make a way out of this.  Trust God?!  Of course she should trust God, I’m sure she’s was trusting Him when she took in all 9 of those children.  But, who’s to say that God did not intersect this woman’s path with ours in order to make a way out of this? 

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?  Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”   James 2:14-17

We have the resources.  Yes, I know that we cannot go around giving to everybody…the need is too great and our resources do have limits.  However, I also believe God brings specific people and situations into our lives in order to use us to do His work.  That is what we will be held accountable for.  All I can do is be faithful to what God lays out in front of me, and trust Him with the rest.  So yes, Kenya has too much need for me to help everyone…but I’m not sitting in everyone’s home and hearing everyone’s stories.  It is this grandmother of 9 starving orphans whose home I am sitting in.  It is my eyes that are seeing this woman’s tears, and it is my ears that are hearing her cries!  God has crossed my path with hers, and so I have a responsibility. How can we walk out?

I look around to the other faces in the room and they are somber.  We all feel the despair that lives in this home, however no one else seems anxious to act on it now.  We are turning our backs on 10 people…9 orphans…who we know with 100% certainty, are going to go hungry tonight.  How deeply does God’s heart break as He watches us turn our backs…

“’Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’  And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’”       Matt 25:34-40