Earlier this week my team and I had the opportunity to visit a hospital near by. We were there to pray for, encourage, and simply love on the patients and their families. We saw physical brokenness and suffering. Most of which seemed to be caused by things that are rarely seen in the states because they are completely preventable.
As I was walking into the children’s ward I saw an older woman sitting alone in front of a tiny bundle that was on the table in front of here. I approached her and asked if I could sit down and I saw that the bundle was the frail, tiny body of a beautiful baby girl wrapped in a blanket. I started talking with the woman just asking casual questions and she proceeded to tell me her story.
The baby girl was one month old and was in the hospital for a regular check-up. The woman was the gogo (grandmother) of the baby. The mother of the infant had committed suicide when her newborn daughter was only one week old and left her to be cared for by the gogo.
I looked down at the tiny girl that was now in my arms and couldn’t help but think about the chaos she was born into. At the tender age of one week old this little girl had already lost her mother and was left in a broken home. I wondered how God could possibly be glorified through this catastrophe and how much dimmer this baby’s future already appeared.
I was quiet for a while and prayed over the girl asking God to bring protection and many blessings into her life. After a long silence, the gogo looked into her granddaughter’s curious eyes and said, “You see this girl, she is your friend.” I was really touched.
This made me think about the state in which God finds us. We are broken, wandering, fatherless people and He comes to us and calls us his friends. He gives us his unconditional love regardless of the state of our hearts and the chaos in our lives.
What if we all loved a little bit more like Christ first loved us?
