Last week I had a dream about orphans. Nothing surprising here as our dreams often have to do with things we talk about before going to sleep and I had been texting with a friend who was sharing a story of orphanages in India. However, my dream is one I can’t get out of my thoughts. In my dream Shale and I were taking care of three orphans; a little girl around the age of 10, a little boy about 6 and a little boy about 4. The dream seemed to last forever and went through several days in our “life” with these 3 kids. During the dream I remember thinking several times “this is so difficult; people were right when they warned me this would be hard”. I remember that I couldn’t get these three kids to sleep because they had behavior issues. I also remember that during the day portion of the dream I would have to wake up, wake these three kids up, and then we would go and spend all day in an orphanage helping take care of other kids. I remember several times in the dream thinking this was so exhausting. However, at each of those moments when I would think that, the youngest boy would look up to me and ask “Why does no one love me?” Over and over during the dream he would ask me this question and each time I couldn’t give him an answer. I remember at one point thinking I couldn’t do this work for orphans any more only to look down and see him look up and say “why does no one love me?” I couldn’t answer his question. I remember thinking I at least wanted to be able to say “well, I love you” but in the dream I could not bring myself to say that. This questioning and not being able to answer kept occurring over and over again until finally my alarm went off.
When I woke up I sat there for a couple of minutes until I started crying. I realized that this question was more real than I wanted to admit. Not only are there children all over the world (146 million to be exact) asking why no one loves them but there is also someone even more important asking this. When I first woke up I thought it was just a question that an orphan could ask and it broke my heart that there were so many kids around the world that could be asking that question. As the week went on and the question lingered in my head God showed me an even deeper question as to who I truly loved. I realized as I kept thinking about this question that it was also a question that Christ could ask of me. Over and over again throughout the old and new testament God impresses on us His love for the fatherless. Over and over He calls us to defend and love the orphan. Yet I often thought of these commands as simply a way of helping those who God loves. I didn’t truly understand that in loving these, I am loving Him. If I am not following verses such as James 1:27, Isaiah 1:17, or Jeremiah 5:28 am I following Him? This doesn’t mean that everyone who is a Christian is called to go out and adopt or run an orphanage. God could be calling someone to obey these verses through coming before Him and praying for children much like the ones in my dream. He may be calling someone to mentor a child in foster care. He could be calling someone to financially help out a family who has been called to adopt but can’t afford it. He may even be calling some to go on a short term missions trip to help those who are exhausted from constantly caring for so many by helping take the burden off them for a week. There are many ways in which God may lead each of us to help this people group He loves but one thing is for certain, He calls each of us to help in some way.
This past Sunday I was teaching my class of college age girls and we were talking about our sin and Christ’s payment for that sin. I shared with them how we often minimize what Christ did for us on the cross. We don’t really understand the pain He had to suffer when all sin of the entire world was heaped on Him at once. One girl in my class later explained it as “all hell literally breaking loose on one man, Christ”. He had to become such sin for us that even God had to look away. However, we often take that picture and minimize it as something that had to take place for our salvation. We separate the pain and suffering from the grace. We take the grace and say that we are saved and God loves us and we forget about the pain because if we truly looked at the pain Christ had to suffer in its entirety it would alter the course of our lives. We would no longer be able to take verses like James 1:27 that say true religion is caring for the orphan and widow and dismiss it to “someone else who God calls to that”. We would realize that in everything that He suffered for us, the LEAST we can do is live lives that dramatically follow the word of God. In our disobedience to follow everything His word says we basically minimize all that happened from the garden to the ascension. We take some verses in the Bible and make them “set in stone” and then we use others as if only a few of us are supposed to do them. It pains me that for years this was the life I lived. Of course I’ve looked back on times in my life when I have lied, gossiped, and had envy and bitterness; and felt repentance and brokenness over the things I’ve done. But have I ever looked at times in my life where I ignored the widow, overlooked the orphan or dismissed the hungry and felt the same conviction? I look at my own life and wonder if I really love Christ enough to follow every single thing His word says or if I just pick and choose the things I was taught to do more than others. In realizing that it becomes much easier to see how Christ could look up at me through the eyes of an orphan and say “why does no one love me?”
No comments:
Post a Comment