I love kids. I love their inhibition. If an adult acted this way, we would call it reckless and daring. When a child does it, it’s simply purity and innocence. Would that we could recognize that sometimes those are all the same thing.
Last night I babysat at an adult community group that meets just down the road from campus. I take the kids upstairs and entertain them while their parents meet in the living room. After about 45 minutes of being attacked by imaginary unicorns while the tiny toddler of the group played Godzilla and plowed through the intricate train set town that the two older girls had built (and rebuilt… and rebuilt… and rebuilt…), one of them grabbed a book and curled up in my lap. As I was reading the story, Ava, age 6, began examining my shirt. I was wearing the T-shirt that one of the Texas team members gave me last summer (Gail, if you’re reading this, thank you—it’s one of my most treasured possessions). I had traced each child’s hand onto the back. Ava laid her hand on top of one of the handprints and said, “We are just the same.”
What beautiful truth spoken from the lips of a child! Because in God’s eyes, we are. They are. There are so many differences between Ava and Queenie, whose handprint she picked out. Both are six-year-old girls, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. A sea of social class, language, education, opportunity, and resources separate these two princesses in the perspective of this world. But to God, they are just the same.
There’s a video floating around facebook right now by Eric and Leslie Ludy. Please take the time to watch this video.
For those of you with sketchy internet connections (or who just won’t take the time to click play… you know who you are…), I’m going to quote a portion of it. Eric heard a story about a 4-year-old orphan in Liberia—a child with absolutely nothing and no one.
“And God asked me a question: ‘What if that was Hudson?’—my 4-year-old. Oh man… You don’t mess with a Father’s heart. If my boy was on the side of the road across the world from me, suffering, totally alone, not knowing what was happening… He’s not old enough to comprehend this! He’s abandoned! He has no one to fight for his cause, no one to give him a voice. He doesn’t even know how to articulate his circumstances. He’s hungry, and no one is feeding him… If my son was in that situation, you could stick a concrete wall in front of me and I would claw through it with my bare hands. This is my son we’re talking about! And if I couldn’t get there, I would call up every friend I have, and I would say, “I have a son, over in Liberia… and if you call yourself my friend, then I need you to get on a plane. And I need you to get to him. I’ll give you the coordinates, I’ll do whatever it takes, but I need you to get to my son, and be a father to him.
God’s response?
‘That’s my Hudson.’”
“We have a cause, but we don’t want to see it… We suffer from depraved indifference.”
And so we quote scriptures about God being a father to the fatherless and shelter to the homeless—we ask Him to feed the hungry and heal the sick. How ironic that we do so while surrounded by our families, in well-heated homes, with a hot meal on the table and a hospital down the road.
Do we have the luxury of family? Of defining who we would claw through a concrete wall for by whether we share the same blood with them?
“How great is the love the Father has lavished upon us, that we should be called sons and daughters of God!”
And so yes, we do have the luxury and the blessing of family—just not an exclusive one. Not if we’re going to call ourselves the hands and feet of Christ. Not if we call ourselves His friends, His servants, His followers.
Last night I babysat at an adult community group that meets just down the road from campus. I take the kids upstairs and entertain them while their parents meet in the living room. After about 45 minutes of being attacked by imaginary unicorns while the tiny toddler of the group played Godzilla and plowed through the intricate train set town that the two older girls had built (and rebuilt… and rebuilt… and rebuilt…), one of them grabbed a book and curled up in my lap. As I was reading the story, Ava, age 6, began examining my shirt. I was wearing the T-shirt that one of the Texas team members gave me last summer (Gail, if you’re reading this, thank you—it’s one of my most treasured possessions). I had traced each child’s hand onto the back. Ava laid her hand on top of one of the handprints and said, “We are just the same.”
What beautiful truth spoken from the lips of a child! Because in God’s eyes, we are. They are. There are so many differences between Ava and Queenie, whose handprint she picked out. Both are six-year-old girls, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. A sea of social class, language, education, opportunity, and resources separate these two princesses in the perspective of this world. But to God, they are just the same.
There’s a video floating around facebook right now by Eric and Leslie Ludy. Please take the time to watch this video.
For those of you with sketchy internet connections (or who just won’t take the time to click play… you know who you are…), I’m going to quote a portion of it. Eric heard a story about a 4-year-old orphan in Liberia—a child with absolutely nothing and no one.
“And God asked me a question: ‘What if that was Hudson?’—my 4-year-old. Oh man… You don’t mess with a Father’s heart. If my boy was on the side of the road across the world from me, suffering, totally alone, not knowing what was happening… He’s not old enough to comprehend this! He’s abandoned! He has no one to fight for his cause, no one to give him a voice. He doesn’t even know how to articulate his circumstances. He’s hungry, and no one is feeding him… If my son was in that situation, you could stick a concrete wall in front of me and I would claw through it with my bare hands. This is my son we’re talking about! And if I couldn’t get there, I would call up every friend I have, and I would say, “I have a son, over in Liberia… and if you call yourself my friend, then I need you to get on a plane. And I need you to get to him. I’ll give you the coordinates, I’ll do whatever it takes, but I need you to get to my son, and be a father to him.
God’s response?
‘That’s my Hudson.’”
“We have a cause, but we don’t want to see it… We suffer from depraved indifference.”
And so we quote scriptures about God being a father to the fatherless and shelter to the homeless—we ask Him to feed the hungry and heal the sick. How ironic that we do so while surrounded by our families, in well-heated homes, with a hot meal on the table and a hospital down the road.
Do we have the luxury of family? Of defining who we would claw through a concrete wall for by whether we share the same blood with them?
“How great is the love the Father has lavished upon us, that we should be called sons and daughters of God!”
And so yes, we do have the luxury and the blessing of family—just not an exclusive one. Not if we’re going to call ourselves the hands and feet of Christ. Not if we call ourselves His friends, His servants, His followers.
I leave you with words written by a friend. The topic he was writing about was a very different one, but the heart of the matter is the same.
“As St. Paul wrote, ‘When we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us’ (Rom 5: 6-8). Let us be like Christ and be willing to die that others may live. That while they may still be sinners, we should die for their sake in His name. And if that means I must adopt a child before this night is through, then let me do so for the glory of God.”
Amen and amen.
John 14:8—“I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.”
Isaiah 6:8—“ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
“As St. Paul wrote, ‘When we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us’ (Rom 5: 6-8). Let us be like Christ and be willing to die that others may live. That while they may still be sinners, we should die for their sake in His name. And if that means I must adopt a child before this night is through, then let me do so for the glory of God.”
Amen and amen.
John 14:8—“I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.”
Isaiah 6:8—“ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
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