I love him just as much as I love you.

Wednesday night I lay awake, sweating and too hot to sleep, and wondered what in the world I was doing here.  Thursday morning I stood in a refugee camp looking in to a pair of Tuareg eyes, hungry for a Jesus they didn't know, and God reminded me, This is why you are here.  I love him just as much as I love you.  Don’t let my children die without me.   And as I sank to my knees in the African dirt and wrapped my arms around the nearest child, I remembered the night that I sank to my knees on a dorm room floor so far away and wept in the presence of God and cried, God, if it costs me my life, I will go.  I will go to Africa.   

 

So now I pray again –

Oh, God, forgive me for my selfishness.  Forgive me for thinking that I am entitled to air conditioning and pillow-top mattresses and cute shoes while your children are starving to death without you all over the world.  Forgive me for being so thankful that you died for me that I neglect to acknowledge the fact that you died for them.  Forgive me for choosing to love my neighbor only when he speaks my language and showers every day.  Don’t let me forget that you reached out to touch the leper, stinking and covered in open wounds.  That poverty and disease do not scare you, although they surely make you sad.  That you died to save an entire world.  Don’t let me forget.