My Broken Heart

I think I’ve mentioned on this blog before that I am involved in an outreach ministry at my church.  We go out into the community and pick up about twenty children and bring them back to the church for a Bible class.  This past week was our VBS so we picked up our “community kids” every night.  I had an opportunity to spend a little more time with them than normal both during class and on the ride to and from the church. 

 

I think I’ve also mentioned that these kids deal with more issues on a day to day basis than I have in my forty years of life.  This week we talked about two fathers.  One died two weeks ago.  The other went to jail about a month ago.  In both cases the children are left without their father.  The one that went to jail will be there for years this time rather than months.  Since we’ve known the kids, this is his third time to be arrested.  Several of the kids are related so these events were fresh on all their minds.  The funeral for the other father was only days before VBS began.  I spent a few minutes on two of the evenings talking about these things and more with one of the moms.  She is overwhelmed.  So am I.  It is very sobering to hear a nine year old boy talk about the details of the last few hours of his father’s life.  His father was 32 years old.  Basically, he died as a result of drug and alcohol abuse.  His son said to me, “I just wish he was still here.”  I do too.

 

Our “normal” Bible class time is on Monday night.  From the time we pick up the kids, have our class and take them back home, we’ve spent a maximum of two hours with them.  We have two hours a week with these children.  Our message, the gospel and the love of Christ, is competing with all the other “messages” they get during the week.  They are inundated with information from parents, friends, school, television, etc.  We have to push through all of that and hope that the gospel penetrates their little hearts before they are hardened by the world. 

 

There have been many Monday nights that I’ve headed home with my heart broken into a thousand pieces because of the stories they tell.  On other nights their behavior is so bad that I leave thinking, “I can’t do this anymore.  I can’t do this.  I can’t do this.”  I’ve driven home with tears streaming down my cheeks because I just don’t know what to do.  Sometimes it seems we’ve made no progress at all.  I’ve driven home asking God, “What is the purpose in all this? What are we supposed to be doing with these kids?”  So many times I want to just give up and quit.  Thankfully, somehow, someway God always brings me back to the broken place in my heart where I am so in love with these children.  I want nothing more than to be a small light in the dark world in which they live.  At the age of nine or ten years old they are already beaten down by the world.  They are living out the consequences of the bad choices their parents have made.  That is the hardest part for me.  These kids could have better lives if only their parents made better choices.  That nine year old boy might have his dad if his dad had never taken that first drink or smoked that first cigarette!

 

Ultimately all we can do is to continue to tell them the greatest story they will ever hear.  Hopefully the details of that story will weave into the details of their story.  I know for sure that I have to keep loving them and speaking God’s Word to them.  His Word and His Story never return void. 

 

One of my co-workers in this ministry said just last night, “if only one of these children is saved, our ministry will have been a huge success.”  Amen!

“And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.” 

 

--Galatians 6:9