I’ve read this line of Jesus’ a few times now, in John 21:15-17, where Jesus and Peter are having a chat.
I’ve always taken it as ‘look after my people, Peter. See to it that noone falls away from me, from my church.’
Never did I take it literally until I set foot in Uganda 4 weeks ago.
What I encountered there has changed my life, my Christian walk, and my view of God forever.
When you see children starving, no food or clothing, no adults around – the verse takes on a whole new meaning. And now that I have seen, I am responsible.
It has been relatively easy to turn my eyes away from the TV screen when a World Vision ad comes on with a starving child and a plea for money while I’m preparing the evening meal for my tribe, but standing right in front of one of our newly sponsored children as they drop to their knees in the dirt that is their front yard, to thank me for choosing them, is an experience beyond words.
I am still processing much of what God has been whispering to my heart, and the outworkings of that will take a lifetime to journey, but I won’t go back.
Back to a place where the widow and the orphan was a cliche. Back to a time when I hadn’t felt the touch of my little Ugandan girls hand as she tentatively put it on my shoulder. Before I had met the amazing people who have nothing, yet have smiles as big as the Grand Canyon and love the Lord with everything they are.
Before I met widowed mothers, many HIV positive, who have to work for food for their children, often many miles away from their home, leaving their babies to care for themselves all day….Who are then the prime target of abduction…or rape.
If they don’t work, they don’t eat. What choice do they have?
I am so grateful to have been born in this beautiful country, with the abundance we get to enjoy every day, and I will never take it for granted again.
But a piece of my heart has deposited itself in a country on the other side of the world, and I know that’s exactly where God intended it.
John 14:18 “I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you.”
