Changing this world...

Jeremiah and I are watching this documentary called "The Human Experience". It's really cool. It got me thinking about my first visit to Jamaica when I was 15. We went to a handicapped orphanage up in the mountains called Westhaven. When I say handicapped you might think of someone in a wheel chair or someone with Down's Syndrome. There are children there with those conditions, but there are also children who are 18 years old but the size of a 1 year old... Children who are shriveled and stunted, molded into contortions from bones that are fused together. Children who are bedridden for life. They are there because their parents saw them at birth and rejected them. I think if many of them were born in America they could have been a lot better off due to available physical therapies and such. But then I also think that in America we have so many tests and technologies available to predict such conditions before children are born that if that child had been conceived here most parents would have aborted them before they were born. It makes me sigh. It makes me sigh a big, long, and deep sigh.

And then I remember their smiles. :) The first time I went I just cried uncontrollably. I cried and to this day I still don't quite understand why. Well for the obvious reasons that these children are so sweet and beautiful and their parents gave them up. But it was more than that. It was the horrible state of humanity and the sheltered lives we lead. It was holding a sweet girl names Janelle who was bed ridden and stuck in one shape and seeing her smile at me. It was the joy they gave me, a joy that rattled my world. And I was the one who was there to minister to them!

I can trace a shift in my world view back to that first trip, back to that orphanage. God changed my life on that trip. He opened my eyes and stirred my soul for someone other than me. And this was done through children that were the scum of the earth, children that couldn't walk or talk or feed themselves.

So, I'm watching this documentary yesterday thinking about how those sweet kids changed me. And I'm left with the dreadful truth: that most of us (including myself) aren't living up to our potential. If those kids could be used to alter my life, how much more should I be altering lives? Not because I'm better than them because I'm not handicapped. But because I'm NOT handicapped. Because I can talk and walk and speak and say deep things and go places. Not to mention all the other gifts I've been given in abundance. I've nothing limiting me.

That's all.

Life Is a Treadmill

Life is a Treadmill.

And it is on a high speed.

I.E. If you are not moving your feet forward, then you are flying backwards!

Have you ever watched a video where someone was distracted on a treadmill and FLEW backwards off into a wall? I have. And this image is precisely what God reminded me of when I was thinking about how I have been slacking off in a few areas. What a wake up call! Sometimes I fool myself into thinking that if I slack a little, it is equivalent to me just standing still, taking a break, catching my breath. In reality, my choices are making me backtrack (the Baptist in me is tempted to say "backslide" but that sounds too dramatic!).


Let's be honest, I have a lot of good excuses for dropping the ball. But excuses is all they are. What I need are actual reasons for dropping the ball in order to justify my behavior and I've found, upon self examination, that all my reasons are selfish.

So, here's to picking myself and my pride up off the floor, hoping no one saw me fly off the treadmill, and praying I am not injured so I can jump back on and keep going! ...Metaphorically speaking of course! :)