With dirty clothes but faces bright and shining, a large group of children sat waiting in a small patch of grass yesterday when we walked home. We looked around, and while we had no idea what was going on, we decided to respond to their cries of "Bye muzungu!" by actually sitting down in the grass next to them. A huge line of motorcycles was forming across the street, a sight strange even for the busy road where boda bodas (motorcycles) freely weave in and out of a busy mess of cars, trucks, and pedestrians alike. A few words of broken English from the kids surrounding was all we needed to find out that a race was about to happen.
While we never actually saw the race (it was getting dark quickly and we decided we should walk home), I saw something even greater. I saw God.
With the 30 tiny faces turned in our direction, 60 beautiful dark-brown eyes, and 300 little fingers touching our faces, hair, and skin, I began to see what God must look like. After all, they were all, like you and I, created in His image.
At one point in the night, one little girl who was sitting beside me turned and looked at me. "Money?" she asked. My heart sank. I had money with me-- plenty of it in fact, because we had just come back from a trip to Kampala. But as I sat and thought/ prayed about giving her some of it, my heart was in deep conflict.
Right now in one of my classes we are reading Ron Sider's book Rich Christians in the Age of Hunger. It is a challenging but incredible book, and reading it while I am here in Africa has made it even more impacting. As I read it and think through things, I keep finding myself paralyzed. It is so easy to be overwhelmed with all the need. The world is fallen, and the sin of this world has caused great suffering. Our sin has caused suffering. My sin has caused suffering. Why was I born into a Christian family in America, instead of one of the many suffering families that I have met here? Abraham was blessed to be a blessing to others. Is this how I am living? And true, in comparison to the great need of the world, I have little to offer. But in comparison to the 5,000 who were hungry, the 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish that the little boy offered (See John 6) were enough to laugh at. But look at what Jesus did with that. Could He do the same with my resources if I let him? What if we all did? And would the glory that God would receive in our faithfulness not be something to speak of in itself?
In Sider's book, I read something that really spoke to my heart this weekend. It was a part of a "membership covenant" for a mission group of The Church of the Savior in Washington DC:
"I believe that God is the total owner of my life and resources. I give God the throne in relation to the material aspect of my life. God is the owner. I am the ower. Because God is a lavish giver, I too shall be lavish and cheerful in my regular gifts."
I don't know how to end the suffering of the billions around the world who don't have food to eat, water to drink, clothes to wear, or a place to lay their heads. I don't even know the extent of the pain in the 30 beautiful faces that I met yesterday in that tiny patch of grass. But I am confident of this: that just as Christ knew the need of the 5,000 hungry who sat on the grassy hill 2,000 years ago, he knows the need of the hungry today. I don't have much to offer him, but neither did that little boy. And if the Word of God says that "whatever we do for the least of these" we do for God himself, maybe I didn't just imagine that I saw God in those 30 tiny faces. Maybe I really did.
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