I've Looked Away

For most of my life, while nestled on my comfy couch, indulging in some yummy food, when those commercials interrupted my entertaining television programs, I turned the channel. You know the ones. Bedraggled children with the lost look in their eyes. Hungry. Alone. Desperate. Bellies distended from malnutrition. Tattered rags falling from their shoulders. I turned the channel. I looked away.

My days are busy and full. Soccer games and golf tournaments. Baseball games in the summer. Finding the perfect dress to wear to a friend's wedding. Making sure the boys have nice new clothes for school. Shopping for the items on their Christmas list. Going to work to help pay our bills. Supporting my husband in his new business. Trying to find time to reach out to others through SGM.

But, when the least of these stood before me with  haunting brown eyes, I have looked away. Over and over again. No time to be bothered with images that are unsettling. The kind of thoughts that shake a faith with a firm foundation to it's knees. I looked away, because I was busy. I looked away because I didn't want to be uncomfortable. Because it's too hard to look, to really consider that children are living in such a hopeless state. I looked away, because I knew that if I ever really looked, I would be consumed with the idea of their suffering. I looked away because I am a selfish coward....because the task seems insurmountable....because there is nothing I can do to save them.

My heart's passion is to reach out to mother's who grieve the loss of their babies...to look on the kind of sorrow that many find uncomfortable, untouchable, that many look away from. And, yet there is a suffering that, as a mother, I cannot wrap my mind around...a suffering that seems too horrible to imagine. So, I have looked away.

But, something happened last Sunday. A speaker from Gospel for Asia came to share about their outreach for the children of India. He spoke of the desperation and poverty, the children cast aside and abused in unspeakable ways...rejected by a religion that tells them they are worthless, less than human if born to a certain "caste"...digging in garbage to find a scrap to feed their starving tummies...filthy from the slums they live in...drinking from a sewer to quench their thirst. I looked over at James, listening intently to the desperate tales of woe suffered by millions of children and fellow human beings on planet earth just minutes after proclaiming his determination to one day own a Playstation 3. I thought of how we cannot determine the conditions we are born into. It could have been me, or one of my children born into the same hopelessness. We know this life of comfort, freedom, and safety. But what if we didn't? What if we only knew the horror of waking everyday to such an agonizing existence? What if we didn't know that a Savior came to die for us? What if we didn't know we had worth and value? What if every moment of our lives screamed the opposite? What if I was the mother forced to watch my children starve to death? What if my child were the one begging on the street and digging in the garbage? I cannot tell you how difficult and frightening it is to even type such "what ifs".

The usual protective numbness that surrounds my heart when such things are discussed was no where to be found. I couldn't look away. I took the books and the picture of a child to sponsor.

These words from the book No Longer a Slumdog (by K.P. Yohannan) have haunted me for several days, piercing my cold heart:


"Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only


 one death to die; that you have only one life, which is short


 and has to be lived by you alone; and that there is only one


 glory, which is eternal. If you do this, there will be many 


things about which you will care nothing. ~ Teresa of Avila




And yet, none of it seems like enough. While I don't believe we should feel guilty for living in a warm, safe house with plenty of food and freedom, it is difficult to reconcile that there is such suffering while we do so. I opened my full cupboard after Sunday's service and made chili and apple crisp. We stuffed ourselves while watching the Cleveland Browns and enjoyed a peaceful Sunday nap. Across the ocean, a starving child digs in the garbage hoping for a scrap someone tossed away.


I don't know how to reconcile that the same loving God sees us both. I don't know how to reconcile the things we think matter so much in the day-to-day world we are living in with the truth of what matters in eternity. I don't know how to reconcile the helplessness I feel that there are so many, and the sudden desperation to take at least one of these children in my arms and let them know that God sees, that they are loved and wanted, valuable and precious in the eyes of Jesus.


I don't know what to do with it all....but one thing is certain...I can no longer look away.


*For a free copy of the book, No Longer a Slumdog and for more information on how you can help Gospel for Asia bring hope and healing to people in desperate need, please visit: Gospel for Asia


And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’
~Matthew 25:40