Just watched ‘Precious’
Wow. I cannot stop crying. I am surprised at my reaction. I hear tragic stories (stories of abuse, rape, abandonment and poverty) day in day out, and have actually been wondering lately where my heart is. I often wonder how I can be so heartless for not being moved to tears.
It’s like they become just stories. They are a million miles from any life I have ever lived. And yet I have the gall to suffer from depression (occasionally). I have lived my life crying about meaningless trivial things. And this is happening to innocent young people EVERY single day! It happened to my baby (my foster daughter).
Why?
Why is it that those who have a good loved upbringing are not grateful for this – is it because they know no different? Is that healthy, that we shield our children from the realities of life outside the perimeter of our homes?
Why is it that children who are abused have to put up with it?
THIS is why we need to be fostering the lost unloved children out there!! THIS is why the church needs to stop forward to give these children a loving home. Not only so that the unloved feel loved, but also that the loved see and understand that there are those that aren’t!
Of course it’s not easy, but are our biological children ever easy? Surely the fulfilment and lessons gained from giving our love to an unloved child is worth it?
For every child that enters a new year unloved... it’s another child that eventually enters adulthood damaged. Another child who reproduces more children who are unloved, as the unloved struggle to show love. Another child that may find love in the wrong places. Another child that may find belonging and ‘love’ in the cells of Pollsmoor or on the streets of the Cape Flats, or under the freeway bridges in Cape Town. Another child that will find any way to numb the pain.
Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow black and white, they’re all precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.
Are we (the church) not the bride of Christ? So should we not love the little children of the world too? When we gave our lives to Christ were we willing to really have our hearts broken for what breaks His? Are our lives ours? What is this society that tells us to pamper to ourselves and hold the needy at arm’s length? We can learn from our African neighbours who put others before themselves, who value the community over the individual? I thank God for a childhood exposed to the real world. I thank God for parents who welcomed the unloved into their home. I remember having poor families living in our caravan, an ex-juvenile convict living in our tree-house, depressed people on our doorsteps, children whose parents didn’t care where they were hanging out at our house, women from cults, abused, divorced, homeless women, disabled and ostracised, the outcasts of society were always at our house. Although as adolescents (and adults) we have been quick to point out my parent’s faults, one thing we couldn’t argue with was that they displayed the heart of God. Did this damage us as children? I don’t believe it did. The only damage done was that we were loved to complacency. We were loved so much that we didn’t know how it feels to be unloved.
By the way.....no one said that by fostering we have to be perfect parents. Ask my girls...they will verify that I certainly am far from that!
