focus

With just two meals a day, which consist of mainly rice with beans and perhaps some vegetables, the believers (as well as their non-believing counterparts) in the city i just visited consider a meat dish a luxury to be had just once a month.

Their focus, however, is to reach out and bless others. So as poor as they are, they reach out to orphans.

I just met a 2 year old boy in an orphanage whose parents were killed in the recent cyclone which ravaged the delta areas. The youngest in that orphanage which housed 19 children, the oldest of which was 14 years old, he looked contented and so so cute. Some of them had lost a parent, and were sent there because the family could not afford to support so many siblings. Some of them lost both parents to malaria or cholera! In this day and age, you would think that no one died of those anymore. But they have no medicines or vaccinations.

The children looked after one another - the older ones having more responsibilities - the pastor said.

I prayed for them, and they sat quietly, with their eyes closed, listening to the prayer being translated for them. I shook their hands - all 19 of them. i wished i had hugged them instead. Then i would have cried, and that would not have helped. So shaking hands was a safer choice.

I asked the Lord to reveal His plan to them, that they will experience and encounter His love in a very real way, more than making up for what they had lost. The Bible says the Lord looks out for those who are fatherless.

Another full time bible school instructor and assistant pastor stumbled into starting an orphanage just before he was married. Together with his wife, and brother and sister in law, he now takes care of 11 orphans from various states of his country. He was sent an orphan - a relative of his. He himself had hardly much, and yet he was willing to take on the challenge. He testified how the Lord provided food, and housing and land. In just over a year, he now has 11 orphans to take care of.

I am spurred, stirred by what i have observed.

What do we want to focus on?
what we don't have
or
what we can do with what we have.

And we have MUCH in CHRIST, so that we no longer focus on what we don't have without Him, or who we were before we were born again.

In fact, in reality and spiritually speaking, the me that was without Christ no longer exists, replaced by the me IN CHRIST.

As such, i will bear much fruit, and fruit that remain!!

There is much to be done: the harvest is plentiful and ready for the harvesting!

Let's focus on the