For Such a Time as This

If you have any food in your fridge, any clothes in your closet, any small roof, rented or owned, over your head, you are richer than 75% of the rest of the world.

If you have anything saved in the bank, any bills in your wallet, any spare change in a jar, you are one of the top 8% wealthiest people in the world.

If you can read these words right now, you have a gift 3 billion people right now don’t, if your stomach isn’t twisted in hunger pangs, you have a gift that 1 billion people right now don’t, if you know Christ as the greatest Gift, you have a gift that untold millions right now don’t.   

(statistics borrowed from The Greatest Gift, by Ann Voskamp, p. 179-180)

Conviction.  Or guilt.  Reading those statistics for the first time I felt a mixture of both.  Why was I chosen to live in smalltown, USA and Kalkidan in one of the poorest sections of Ethiopia?  It's a question I have pondered often.  It's a marvelous gift for me, and a devastating curse for her.  The girl who was forced into prostitution as a mere child.  Grew up with a mother who died and a father who didn't want her.  Not allowed to go to school or learn to read.  Had a baby when she was just 14, by a man she didn't even know.  Forced by her circumstances to give up that baby to an orphanage.

 We sat under a blazing sun, the details of her story pouring out, stopping only so that my friend could translate.  I had asked her to tell me her story.  Me, a virtual stranger, and she was entrusting me with the darkest of secrets.  All I could do was hold her hand and stare into her eyes, willing her to see that I cared and that I didn't judge. Kalkidan, the the shy girl with sparkly eyes who photo-bombed every picture during our visit to Women at Risk earlier in the week.  The one who rushed to sit next to me, held my hand while we prayed, and wouldn't leave my side.  Precious girl, desperate for someone to notice her, to look past the sins of her past, and really see her.

Just moments earlier, Wenshet had told me a similar story of loss and death and heartache too early for any human being to endure.  I knew I only had moments left with her here in this place; our flight was leaving later that day, and I wanted to use these precious moments wisely.  

"Do you know Jesus?"  I asked.  She assured me she did.  "Then we will see each other again someday, even if it's not here, in Africa.  We will be together in heaven someday!  Do you know that?"  She said yes, she did, but she was afraid of her sin.  The things she had done in the dark, in the secret, things too shameful to mention.  Would she be excluded from this place, this heaven?

"I am afraid of my sin too.  It's too awful to mention.  But that is why Jesus came for us.  Jesus took our sin on Himself when He died for us - He became sin - and he made us as pure and white as...."

"Snow" was on the tip of my tongue, but then I remembered I was in Africa, and that analogy would not work!  I searched my mind for another word, then turned and noticed a scarf wrapped around the neck of the woman sitting near us, a beautiful pure white scarf with tiny glittering sequins on it.  "As white as this scarf!"  The woman wearing it lit up, having no idea why we were both touching her scarf, tears forming in our eyes.

I asked Wenshet if I could pray for her, and what she would most want prayer for. She told me she was scared that she'd return to prostitution.  She asked me to pray that she would be strong and keep learning about Jesus and forgiveness for her sin.

Kalkidan on the left, Wenshet on the right

When I whisper up a prayer for strength, it's usually so that I won't snap at my kids, or so that I can get through my endless to-do list each day.  When these girls pray for strength - it's a plea to survive one more day off the streets.  One more day of showing up at the program that is slowly teaching them to read, to learn a skill, to build a future.  What lives of contrast.

Lest I slip again into guilt, I remind myself that I was born "For such a time as this." This blog post, by Ann Voskamp, deeply touched Andy and I when we read it this past summer.  It served as a catalyst for us to say "yes" to going to Ethiopia. Please take time to read it - she explains it so well.  We, like Queen Esther of the Old Testament, are the ones living in the palace, and there's a whole hurting world on the other side of the gates.  We have a responsibility as palace dwellers.  "To whom much is given, much will be required."  Luke 12:48

These two precious souls - I can't get them out of my mind.  I pray for them almost every day.  I try to imagine what they might be doing.  I keep allowing myself to be haunted by their stories, lest I get too comfortable in the palace and forget.

 
 I think God longs for all of us to let our guards down and allow our hearts to see the hurt in this world, and be broken to pieces. Then, to place those broken bits before Him as our offering, letting Him heal and soften and turn those hard pieces into something that can be used for good.  With a softened heart,  we can then move from the safety of the palace into a hurting world and hurt with it.  No longer paralyzed by guilt or immobilized by indifference, we open our hearts to dare to move beyond our borders and bring hope.  Hope not in ourselves and in what we can do, but in a God who gave up everything to save humanity and continues to relentlessly pursue each one of us.

Compared to Jesus, we're all outside the gate, a mass of sin and pain and brokenness.  Yet with His one sacrifice - to be born into this mess, to die a sinner's death, and to raise from the dead victorious - the gates fling wide open and we all gain entrance into the palace of the King.  It's too wondrous to believe.  And yet we do - we believe.

 May I never become too comfortable in the palace.  May I offer up the broken pieces of my life to the One who brings beauty from ashes.  May I dare to believe that He'll use me to share His love and hope with a broken world.  May I live in awe of the sacred gift of Himself, not just at Christmas, but every day I have on this earth.

Merry Christmas, dear friends. 
Much love to you all.
~Katie