Like most sane people, I do everything possible to avoid feeling pain. I don’t like pain. I know of few people who do. But I’ve come to realize that sometimes a broken heart can be the greatest blessing.
Let me explain. Sometimes people tell me that they could not handle going to the mission field where poverty is extreme. “It would break my heart”, they say. I understand. For a long time I too avoided coming face to face with the intense pain and suffering of other people. Especially if the pain and suffering were partly due to poverty. If poverty were to blame for their pain, it might mean that I have the power to do something, however small, about it. I might be able, and thereby responsible, to change my own way of living in order to help someone else. I might have to sacrifice. And I’m not wild about sacrifice.
In the early 90’s I traveled to Romania with four men from our congregation. We were there to help refurbish a building that was going to be used to house street children. Romania had an abundance of street children as a result of the communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu’s attempt to raise up an army.
As we worked pouring cement and doing general labor, the street kids played among us. Some of the children were as young as six years of age and were already living on the streets, completely on their own. We also visited an orphanage while in Romania. I will never forget that experience. I had heard about the Romanian orphanages. Before communism fell the program 20/20 had done an episode expsoing the horrors of those orphanages. A year after communism, things were better, but still it took a toll on my white, middle-class American mother's heart. When we left I sobbed uncontrollably. I didn’t know sounds like that could come out of me. My heart had been completely broken by what I saw.
In 2004 I traveled to Haiti with a group from our church. Again, I was overwhelmed with the indescrible poverty. We were surrounded by every sort of human suffering imaginable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for two weeks. We went to sleep to the sound of the voodoo drums beating and animals screaming because they were being sacrificed and then we awoke to the sights, smells, and sounds of the kind of misery only poverty brings about. Never before had I seen people so desperate for food that they would run behind the truck for miles in hopes of getting a small bag of beans and rice. The look in their eyes told us that if they did not get a bag of food, they would not be eating that day. Who knows how long it would be before another truck would come to give them relief.
Upon returning home from Haiti, I traveled to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and there again, saw the depth of poverty right here in our own country. The Pine Ridge reservation encompasses the two poorest counties in the United States of America.
I remember, as some others do, the sadness of seeing some of the children taking scraps from the other children’s plates so they could take them home to eat later. These were scraps they were taking—not just "extra” food for a snack later. Quite possibly, the meal we served was the only meal some of those kids would get that day.
I encourage you, if you've never experienced a mission trip, do it. You will see poverty. You will see hunger. You will see the lifestyle that complete hopelessness creates. But you will also see a child's eyes light up when she sees that you've kept your promise to come back for a return visit. You will see the sheer delight of a child’s laughter as you swing them on the swing set. You may have a teenager trust you with a secret pain. For a momnet, you will see the hope that love gives. And then you will realize that you do have the ability to make a difference in the life of at least one child. In short, you will become a little more human and a little more Christ-like.
Yes, your heart will break …. But that’s a good thing.
Yahweh
by U2
Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I’m waiting for the dawn
Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don’t make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticize
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss
Still waiting for the dawn, the sun is coming up
The sun is coming up on the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?
Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break
