Lately I have been overwhelmed by the need and the poverty and the hurting and the difficulty for the masses in Bangladesh…again. Everywhere I look, I see need. And I don’t have enough apples or mangoes to pass out to the beggars. And there isn’t enough corrugated tin to make roofs in the middle of the monsoons. And really, unless you’re singing at the top of your lungs, “the kindness of a Saviour—the hope of nations; our God is mighty to save,” it is really hard to believe there is any hope for a place like this.
When I do have an apple to give out to a beggar girl, and then she taps on the car window to ask for another, and the guard employed by the store in front of which I am parked, yells and swats her away—he thinks he is helping, but I want to say, “wouldn’t you ask for another one?” I mean, really, if you lived on the streets every day of your life and you lived in a country where there are far more people taking up space than there are jobs to offer, wouldn’t you ask for another apple?
I saw a glorious moment the other day though, and it was like God put it there just for me. Rick had put two apples beside a baby who was playing on a tarp while his mother picked through the trash heap nearby. Another beggar family came by and the boy picked up one of the apples; his mother asked what he was hiding, and he reluctantly showed her. She told him to put it back, and he did! He actually did instead of wolfing it down and running away and destroying the evidence .
Psalm 35:10 My whole being will exclaim, “Who is like you, O Lord? You rescue the poor from those too strong for them, the poor and needy from those who rob them.”
Psalm 68:5 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. Not that we can say this, because God never changes, but if He were to be at his holiest at any one point, he would be so when he is looking after his orphans and taking care of his widows. Now there is hope for a place like Bangladesh.
written by Chris
