Blessing & Suffering

This past week we had a team of 20 people on a short term team come and stay with us. One night as we were going around and each sharing a part of our day, the members of the team each took turns sharing their hearts and most started with "I was so blessed by....". They all spoke of wonderful God moments that each had on the trip. As I listened and thought about what to share the only moment that sat in my mind and would not be forgotten happened earlier that day as I spoke with a woman about vitamins and nutrition.

This woman came to us with a 4 month old baby that is pictured above. The baby was more the size of a 1-2 month old. The woman had not been feeding her because the doctor told her not to breastfeed since she was anemic & did not have enough iron to do so, the mother also had no money to buy food for her or the baby; so they had simply not been eating. We fed the baby formula we had on hand and gave the mother some to take with her. We gave medicine to the mom because she had a bad case of scabies. We fed the mom and gave her some clothes for her and the baby. We also gave her some vitamins with iron for herself. As I was speaking (along with the translator)explaining to her how to make the formula and how she needed to take the vitamins, the woman said to me, "What good does that do me? I never have any food to eat." What do I say to that? I told her that we would be able to help some but not all the time. We did send some food home with her but what about later?

My heart broke as I realized that I had no long term answers for this woman and there are thousands more like her that don't even get what I gave her. It is hard to wrap my mind around all the suffering that the Lord allows me to see. Yet as I shared this on the roof with the team that night, there were no responses. None of us had answers and no one said "Amen" because a great blessing had been shared with everyone. Later as I thought back on what I had shared along with everyone else's blessings that had happened, the Lord showed me it was indeed a blessing. The blessing for me in this, is that the Lord shared with me a fraction of the suffering that he sees everyday. In the midst of suffering there is blessing because it draws me to the heart of God. There isn't anywhere else I would rather be.

Cody