Humbled through the Slums

Imagine going to the mall and getting your white chocolate mocha from Starbucks...talking with your friends....showing each other the new shirt you just bought.....and literally right around the corner from this mall is a group of people living in the worst slums you've ever seen.  A couple days ago we had the opportunity to help out with a kids ministry that a church puts on for these slum kids. When we arrived the entrance looked bad, with cardboard and scraps of wood as walls, tin pieces acting as roofs over these tiny little shacks. But when we began our entrance in to this little strip where people were calling home....I had already begun to have pity on these people. There was trash everywhere....rotten food, flies swarming everywhere from the stench of this place. Naked kids running around...hardly any with shoes on their feet. People trying to make something so bad into a home...dirty faces everywhere....dirty hands clinging to yours...because they are so excited you're there. We were given the tour of the stretch of these make shift shacks and then began to set up for the kids ministry.

We layed down a tarp over the trash filled street and had about fifty kids sit down on it. The church volunteers were awesome...singing songs with the kids, telling them Bible stories....they even let us sing some songs, and do a game with the kids. These kids ranged from about two to fourteen years old. But some thing that honestly took me by surpirse was these kids worshiping. I have never seen worship like this before...in all my life. These kids were raising their hands....praising God in a way that I have never seen. From their surrounding they should have been complaining...they should have been asking God why they were given a life like this. But these little children had risen above their circumstances and decided that they would praise the Creator of the Universe despite what had been given to them.

But then as we were about to leave our translator told us that they wanted to pray a prayer of blessing over our lives. My mouth dropped open.....as these tiny hands began raising up and this beautiful language was poured out over us. I lifted my hands and received this prayer still in shock of what was happening. I did not understand how someone who has absolutely nothing would want to pray blessing over my life....and I have everything? I do not understand this selflessness. This was probably the most humbling thing I've ever had to go through....and something I will never forget. What would happen if we all lived out our lives with this type of selflessness toward each other? Well I think we would look a lot like Christ......and that's what I saw that day. Christ in the slums...with all the flies, skin diseases, and malnourished children. I want that....and so my pity for these people turned into a longing and desire to have what they have. They may not have anything in the world eyes, but they have something so deep and profound, that only the Father can give.....and I want that!