I arrived at Beautiful Gate on Friday. What a feeling to walk on campus and hear the staff celebrating and the children chanting my name and running to me. I found it funny that there are a lot of new children and even though they did not know me they came running as well. It was a great time running around with them in my arms, as well as going into each and every house greeting the housemothers and meeting the new little babies. When I got on campus my friend Anita was at a meeting off campus. It was such a good feeling to talk out of a baby house and see her searching for me in the other houses. Coming to BG is a home coming for me. Every six months I leave a little piece of my heart here and when I come back I get reunited with it.
On Saturday, my housemates went into South Africa for the afternoon, I was excited to just spend the day relaxing at BG, playing with the children and getting organized so I stayed back. In the afternoon I took two of the older children on a walk. I loved this time with them. One of the boys has special needs and has very bad vision. As we walked he would trip and loose his balance on the dirt paths. The other boy would grab his hand and tell him where we were and if we heard an animal, he would explain what kind it was and what color it was. It was so good to see these two helping each other. The boy with the vision impairment is so funny. When he would trip and I would help him up, he would say "I am so clever." I could feel my heart growing every time. He didn't care that he had a hard time seeing, which caused him troubles getting around, he was so excited to be off campus walking around that he soaked in it all with joy.
On our walk, we saw an elderly woman hunched over walking with a cane very slowly. Her tattered clothes and wholly shoes made me assume she did not have much. There was a little boy walking with her, about 5 or 6 years of age. He was carrying a bucket of water back to their house. He was so focused on not spilling it, but when walking on uneven dirt roads, that is a tough thing to do. Every time any amount of water splashed out of the bucket the elderly women would take a switch and hit the young boy. He had tears running down his face as he stepped. I can only imagine the tears were a mix of the physical pain and the emotional pain of knowing that he was failing her expectation. As I thought about each splash on the ground, I thought about every time I failed an expectation of someone else or myself. With each set you feel the pain and you weep because in your heart your desire to do one thing, but the path you are on can cause obstacles that do not allow you to achieve that task. During those moments you may receive verbal or physical correction from someone and it hurts. Let's face it none of us want to let another person down. But the joy and hope we have as Christians is that with every step, our Father provides a place to put our feet. There maybe moments when the ground is rocky and uneven and it is hard, but there is always a place to step. There may be moments when the road is smooth and the journey seems easy to pass. On each journey we need to take heart, because as the gospel of John says, "I have told you these things so that in me you have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (16:33).
Currently I am a part of an accountability group in the States that is reading through the Bible. The past few days we have been reading in Matthew about how the Lord loves his children. He does not want anything to harm them or be put in their way. He adores them. As Matthew 18:6 says, "If anyone causes one of these little ones - those who believe in me - to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large milestone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." I am not sure about you, but that doesn't sound good to me. With every step of our journey let us find ways to grab children by the hand and guide them on the walk. Let us be like the two boys at BG who help each other and use our specific gifts to encourage those around us. Let us not take out our switches, either physical or verbal, and only guide through pointing out the faults of those we are with.
May we all be like God's children who walk in faith not by sight and laugh at our obstacles, because the Lord is using the journey to make us "clever."
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