i love it when it feels like i am just sitting next to God.

last sunday we started a series of discussions with the youth group about social justice organizations/non-profits, that do what they do for the sake of redemption and the gospel. we talked last week about To Write Love on Her Arms and God really used renee’s story and the story of her friends being the church to her, to minister to a couple of my students. This week we are talking about Compassion Int’l.

Compassion has a special place in my heart because my wife and i sponsor a boy named Clement, who is from burkina faso. Last week i used a couple of youtube videos for the TWLOHA discussion so i sat down looking for some Compassion Int’l videos for this week. While looking through the videos i found a great one that will be easy to use as illustrations, but while i was watching it i was taken back to the night that kimb and i decided to sponsor Clement.

we were at Andrew Peterson’s, Behold the Lamb of God tour. on a side note, if you have never heard this cd, or seen this show, or have never heard any of Andrew’s music, you have absolutely no idea what you are missing. Back to the story. Bebo Norman was one of the singer/songwriters in the concert and he talked about compassion, his sponsored child, and the joy that it brought him as well as the joy he knew it brought his sponsored child. Kimb turned to me and said these words…i will never forget them…

“we need to sponsor a child. we do not need cable”

now this is the christmas before we got married, just over two months before our wedding day and we were in the process of doing budget stuff seeing how much we would have left over, how much we could spend on certain things for the house, etc and i knew that money was going to be pretty tight. when she told me that we did not need cable, my first thought was, well what about the astros games? what about the rockets games? those are only on cable. i tried to justify in my mind not sponsoring a child simply so we could have cable television. then i felt this weight that was unexplainable. i realized what i was doing and simply turned to kimb and said “you’re right.” so during the intermission, we went down to the lobby and stared into the faces of all the young children in the compassion packets. then we picked up clement’s packet, looked at each other with a smile and knew that we had found the right one. so we signed up. took his packet and went and sat back down in our chairs.

then we begin writing letters to clement, and he writes back. we send extra money for a gift for him, and in the next letter we hear in his words, how excited he is about the gift. for christmas we enclosed more money than usual and asked that it be used to get rice for his family* stay tuned to the end of the post…

so anyway, back to preparing for sunday night…im watching this video about the girl who was a sponsored child from Manilla. she has grown up and through compassion, and by the grace of Jesus Christ has become an amazing woman of God who has made something of herself. A living, breathing, active part of her community and the Kingdom of her God. She now, is in turn, sponsoring her own child through compassion.

when i heard her say that…i lost it. i just started crying right there at my dining room table. I realized that through compassion, we am helping pull Clement out of an impoverished life, and putting him in a place where he and his family can thrive. we are helping pull him and his family out of poverty. we are making sure that in a very relevant way, he is hearing the gospel and is being loved, and fed, cared for, and kept healthy.

Which is exactly what God did for us. through Christ, he saved us from the life that would eventually lead to death.

so yesterday afternoon, at my dining room table, it felt like i was sitting right next to God. it was one of the most silent, yet amazing worship experiences of my life. please, if you have taken the time to read this much of this story, please take a couple extra minutes and visit compassion.com and take the time to sponsor a child.  please.

and i would like you to meet clement. notice the bag of rice at his feet……