Give Me Your Eyes

Brandon Heath wrote a great song titled “Give Me Your Eyes”… the chorus of the song goes like this:

“Give me Your eyes for just one second… Give me Your eyes so I can see… Everything that I keep missing…Give me Your love for humanity.

Give me Your arms for the broken hearted… The ones that are far beyond my reach... Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten… Give me Your eyes so I can see”

Here are a few things that I was not seeing until God opened my eyes:

•     1 billion people are starving to death on our planet—half are children

•     Another billion do not have clean, safe water to drink (my dog and my lawn drink better water than these precious people)

•     There are twice as many slaves in the world today than all the slaves brought to America before the Civil War—and many of them are children.

•     There are ~145 million orphaned children in the world

•     More than a third of the entire world’s people live on less than $2 a day.

•     And here’s one that’s got a strangle hold on my heart… 24,000 children, under age of 5, die every single day from preventable causes..infections, fevers, diarrhea .  That’s one child every 3.5 seconds.  171 kids have died since I started writing this post.  I’ve got three kids 5 and younger, and each of them has had at least one of these maladies in the past six months.  For us, it’s an inconvenience.  For so many others, it’s life-threatening.  Why?  Pretty much because they are poor…they simply can’t afford access to basic, life-saving medical care and supplies.  I’m not talking about MRIs here, I’m talking about $5 antibiotics, clean water to wash out a wound, or medicine to treat malaria.

Source for Statistics: The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns

It seems like a lot of things are broken in our world, but I’ve come to realize that I am broken, too.  God commands us to love one another, but I am indifferent and apathetic toward the issues people listed above.  I read stories and see videos about people in these situations…situations that are not consequences of their choices, actions, or attitudes, but the result of their being up against forces much too powerful for them to overcome on their own (ie-political, cultural, economic, natural).  My heart is moved, and I care… temporarily… but then life moves on, the moment passes, and I do nothing.

I am convinced that God’s solution for this type of suffering and injustice is the free will generosity of His people.  Everyone does something because no one can do everything.  We are Christ’s body on this earth… we are His hands, His feet, and His heart.  He works through His body… if we’re not doing it, no one is.  God chose us.  We are THE plan…there is no backup plan.  If we do small things with great love, we can change things, one person at a time.

So, it turns out that I am the one that needs fixed… I am the one that needs to see what Jesus sees and feel what He feels.  The great news is that if I open my eyes and my heart… Jesus uses me. There are solutions to address our world’s challenges and God can nudge me to do small things… from helping fund water wells to welcoming a baby into our home.

Ryan