... Today I stepped over a shoe. It was not any shoe. It was about a 7/ 1/2 U.S. size. It was covered in mud. feces and most likely some sort of disease. I thought for a moment about this shoe, and where it came from. Who owned it? How long had it been lying there? How did it end up in such a place? What did it do to deserve this life? Then I came back to earth.
Why am I thinking about this shoe? I should be asking similar questions about the child I'm currently hugging.
I am hugging the neck of a young boy in the largest slum in Uganda. Approximately 20,000 people squaller in existence, if you can call it that... The slum is located in Kampala, the capital of this bueatiful country. Despite it's many lovely places, Uganda's darkest side are it's slums. Full of large black fire-pits, gasoline, glue, urine, feces, chickens and a whole number of other atrocities. I should be passing out.
Life for a child in the slums is filled with excitement. They wake up at the crack of dawn after little-to-no sleep. To sleep means to get robbed or abused. There are two sets of street children in Uganda. One set sells scrap metal or bottles, and purchases a "safe-place" in video shop for sleeping during the day to avoid abuse or worst. Another set smells toxic gasoline on a tattered cloth all day, then gets so high that he passes out, only to wake up and do that again. So yes, life is super exciting.
As I hug this scrawny little neck, I cannot help but feel how Jesus' heart is aching. I know that this precious little one is loved beyond any controlling slum in this world. His heart is confused, yet he does not know it. 'How do I live without this glue in my hand or defense in my heart?' He thinks.
Jesus is bigger than this.
I am encouraged to pray for eyes to be open to truth. That blind scales on the eyes of his heart would fall off and he would ONLY see light. I pray that the light he would see would be that he is a precious child of God, and innocent. That nothing he has done in his life would separate him from this love. That he needs nothing but God to make him whole. Nothing but God.
I pray that soon he will know he is not worthy of being trampled over or stepped on. I hope he will know soon he is a child of the king, worthy only of love.
I cannot give him food today, for if he has a full stomach and empty soul, what good does it do?
What I can give him is much greater.
Jesus is bigger than any slum.
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