Something interesting happened a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
I came in from picking up the boys from school one day, and there was a message from Compassion International on our answering machine. That was a little odd, we’ve never gotten a message from Compassion before, just letters and emails that sort of thing. What they said kind of caught me off guard a little. Made me think back several years ago when we started with them.
About 11 years ago, shortly after the birth of our first child, we decided we needed to do something to help someone else. We decided we needed to help another child and his parents if we could. I kept thinking about what it would be like to love your child as much as I loved mine, and not be able to give them the things they needed to grow up healthy, or even to grow up at all. I knew that if I were in a situation like that, I sure would want someone, anyone, to come alongside me and help. So we decided to sponsor a child through Compassion.
We signed up and sent all the paperwork off to them. We let them pick the child and the country he or she was from. They sent back a package of info with a picture of a skinny boy named Gamaleyan, a 9-year-old from India. We put his picture and info on the refrigerator and began to sponsor him. We began to pray for him. From time to time we would recieve progress reports from Compassion on how he was doing in school and such, and also letters from Gamaleyan. “Dearest Uncle Seaton and Aunt Kristin, Thank you….” began the letters, and they would end ”I am praying for you. Affectionately yours, Gamaleyan”
So for the next 11 years, every month, Compassion International took out $32 from our bank account and Gamaleyan went to school, had food to eat and clothes to wear.
Back to the present. The message from Compassion International was to notify us that Gamaleyan was now an adult and had graduated from the program. He had made it through school, was trained as an electrician and looking for work. We were no longer his sponsors.
It was a strange feeling.
It still is.
It doesn’t feel like we did very much, a letter every now and then, a little extra money at Christmas so he could have a gift. We surely didn’t do as much as we could have. Somehow I feel a little guilty, a little embarrassed. It was so easy. We didn’t miss the $32 a month. As a matter of fact, we didn’t even think about it most months. But I’m glad we did it.
And thankful too. Because he was interceeding on our behalf, and only God knows how much we needed it, still need it. Maybe we were more in need than he was. Sometimes I forget the letter to the to the angel of the church at Laodicea. I may not say that I’m rich, well fed and in need of nothing, but I sure do live that way. I forget to look beneath the veneer of stuff, and remember that I am poor, pitiful, blind and naked and very much in need of the One who stands at the door and knocks.
Now it’s time to do it again, to start over with another child. Soon we’ll have another picture on the refrigerator, each month $32 will transfer from our bank account to Compassion International and somewhere, I don’t know where yet, a child will begin to go to school, eat every day, have clothes to wear. Maybe she will pray for us.
And maybe a parent, both here and there, can give thanks.
