There are moments when the life the Lord has given us to
live sounds very romantic…loving children who need a family, restoring their
lives, being an instrument of His redemptive grace in their little hearts! Then there are those moments when that romanticism
disappears among the daily-ness of life.
Tomorrow night is bath night. Praise the Lord that since the water tank was
raised in January all three of our bathrooms can function at once, four years
after adding the second story to our home.
That makes 18 kids taking a bath
a whole lot faster! What once took at
least six hours can now happen in less than two hours!
Something else happens periodically on bath night…nail
cutting! When that delightful evening
rolls around, I can cut upwards of 160 nails on the children who need help with
that process! Somebody has to cut those
nails; and I thank Jesus that He chose me to do it!
Restoring their lives, loving them to wholeness, and helping
them discover all that God has sown in them, comes down to digging grime out
from under fingernails and praying that Jesus will cleanse the grime of all
they have lived and experienced that muddies their hearts .
“So we fix our eyes
not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal.” 2
Corinthians 4:18
The fingernails aren’t the real issue! I have
to keep my eyes on the eternal-ness happening before me as those same eyes
stare at stuck muck under toenails. Fingernails
and toenails are definitely temporary…at least every two weeks they need
cutting again….and again….and again…hmmm, 160 nails per nail-cutting-night,
times 26 times a year….let’s stop with the math before looking at the temporal
discourages me! While fingernails and
toenails are awfully temporary, what happens inside by simply being present to cut those nails is certainly eternal.
With several of our children I have very vivid memories of
my first nail cutting experience with them.
Obviously there had not been anybody willing to cut those nails for quite
some time and, obviously, the child in question had not yet learned to cut
their own nails. Restoring children’s
lives to wholeness sounds just wonderful….but who wants to cut their toenails?
In just a few weeks, the nails that I cut and clean today will
be long and dirty again. The results
aren’t always what we had hoped for, wished for, worked for or even prayed
for. But we live satisfied knowing that
we cleaned the nails and loved the hearts that God asked us to clean and love.
Today there are 127,000 children and youth in the United
States waiting for somebody willing to cut their fingernails and toenails. Worldwide there are 153 million orphans
needing somebody to dig the grime out….from under their nails….and love it out
of their hearts.
I don’t fully understand how the Lord takes cutting
fingernails, doing dishes, sweeping the floor and wiping down the kitchen
counter for the umpteenth time in one day, chore charts, spelling lists, and
plates of rice and turns them into life changing instruments of grace and
transformation. But, maybe that is His
specialty. After all, he turned a manger
into a crib, mud into a miracle-working ointment, H2O into wine fit for a king,
and an executioner’s tool into the greatest grace symbol to be had…the cross.
So, tomorrow I will cut some fingernails…and trust that Jesus
will continue to use those clippers in these hands to transform some lives.
(If you feel the Lord tugging at your heart to take another
hand in yours and cut those precious nails, visit www.cryoftheorphan.org for more
information…and invest in several good pairs of nail trimmers.)
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