Good morning. It is really an honor for me to be here today. My husband and my nine-month old son are here
with me; it's our first time to Lynchburg, and so we've been enjoying it. We were hearing a little bit about your school
last night, including the list of some of your speakers to Convocations before and I
have to admit, I might have preferred to know that after I was finished today. So, I understand you even had a neurosurgeon
here recently, so, I'm going to ask everyone to just take it down a notch. Take your expectations down a notch or 10
for me here this morning, but thank you so much for being here. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to
talk with you. As I wondered about what to speak with you
about this morning, I thought I would just share a little bit of my story and some of
the lessons that I've learned along the way. I graduated from Wheaton College and I remember
so vividly that senior year of college and all the excitement, all the anticipation,
all the well-meaning questions that we even get. I remember people saying, "Are you going to
go for the Master's? It's the new Bachelor’s!" "Are you going to get married? The biological clock is ticking," "Are you
going to do Kingdom work, or the other kind?" And then there were my own ideas as well,
and there was - it sounded so cool to be in the corporate world. I wanted like the great, you know, key card
access-entry into the great office. I also remember finding a job posting with
the Peace Corps and they had a place in Mauritius, and I thought that sounded great, and then
there were my own ideas too. Like I remember wondering, "What is Kingdom
work and non-Kingdom work and will someone please explain the difference to me?" And so, as I kind of brainstormed what I was
going to do next, I went online and I remember finding - I thought it would be great to go
overseas, and I wanted to go overseas and work with children and learn a little bit
more Spanish. And so I found this great job opportunity
in Haiti and I remember emailing back and forth with this guy and there was an orphanage
in Haiti. He said they didn't have accommodations, but
there was a place that I could sleep outside and all this and I thought, "Okay, this sounds
fantastic." Now, I'm a middle child and I have always
been the one who's kind of tended to make my father do this throughout my life. I think I've terrified him really since the
day I was born. So I went to everyone with the good news that
I was going to Haiti, I talked to this guy online, great place for me to sleep outside,
you know, he was not as excited as I was and now I look back and I think if I had a daughter
who had that idea, I'd be like, "Great, yeah. Try again, you're not doing that." And that is pretty much what he said to me,
so he was like, "Mm-hm, keep going, come up with something else." So I did end up finding an orphanage in the
Dominican Republic where two Wheaton grads worked, and so, went out there and worked
for the summer. I had interviewed with Coke before I went,
and Coca-Cola was my dream company to work for. That was my dream job. And I hadn't heard anything when I left, and
so I went on to the DR and actually while I was over there they called and there was
a job opening in Michigan and they said, "Do you want it?" And I said, "I can't take it; I've committed
to do this for the next, you know, eight or ten weeks, and I can't do that." And they said, "Well, a second opportunity
doesn't always come available with Coke." And I said, "I know, and I want that job so
badly but I have got to follow through with my commitment here." And so, I finished my time there, went back
home and another opportunity did come up with Coke. So they called and this time it was in Atlanta,
which was my hometown, and so I was going to get to work for Coke in Atlanta—yeah! Any Coke fans still here in Virginia? I mean - yeah - die hard Coke fan. So I was really excited. It was a fantastic job. I had an amazing boss, it was an incredible
training experience and I still think the world of the company and of the time that
I had there. They provided - it was a good salary, they
provided a company car, I had a home office, and all these wonderful things. But the thing is, those perks still don't
keep you from crying yourself to sleep at night if you're just really unhappy, and this
was still kind of at the time you didn't have voicemail, or answering machines. I'm not actually that old, but all this stuff
has happened very quickly. And so I had an answering machine in my home
office and so my clients - I had like 1,500 accounts that I would work with - they would
call at all hours of the night, you know, if they realized they had forgotten to order
their bag in a box for the Coke and they were going to need it the next day at the restaurant. So all night I would hear the answering machine
going, but they would be so angry at me and they would just call me all kinds of names
and I'd be lying there and I'd think, "No one's ever called me that before. They've never even met me, why do they hate
me so much?" And that goes along with the job, like it
was a sales job, like you have to have a certain kind of a, I think, of a tough skin. And the thing is I didn't have it, I didn't
have what it took. I could do the job, it wasn't that it was
hard, but I actually wasn't sure I was going to like the person that I would turn out to
be in the end, because it was really making me not enjoy being around people as much,
and I think that's such an important part of life. And so I made the really difficult decision
to leave that job, and then I didn't know what I was going to do. So my father had a ministry, and I thought,
you know, I never thought I would go work for the family ministry, and so I thought,
"Okay, I'll go there temporarily, so that for a short period of time until I figure
out my next step." And while I was there, the opportunity came
to take an internship in D.C., and I was working for the White House under President George
W. Bush in the Office of Public Liaison, and it was a fantastic experience. The Office of Public Liaison is called something
different now, but basically it's the point of connection between the administration and
the public and various constituency groups. So we would organize briefings, and these
constituency groups were invited to attend, and the president would usually speak at them,
and this gave them the opportunity to be heard and then to be able to dialogue back and forth
with the administration about their needs to understand why certain decisions were made. And I loved it! I loved the intensity of the experience, I
loved the long hours, I loved that no one - you know, that someone would give me a task
to do and no one would explain to me how to get it done, but they had the full expectation
that I would figure it out and there was no room for error. I thrived in it! I just loved it! I remember one day when I was walking past
our Administrative Assistant's desk and she said, "I have got to go to the restroom,"
you know, "can you sit here for a second for me?" And I was like, "I don't know how to work
the phones. I don't think that's a good idea." And she was like, "I'll just be a minute,
no one's going to call." I was like, "All right." And so she leaves and of course, as soon as
she leaves the phone rings and I answered it and it was Carl Rove and he wanted to speak
to someone and I didn't know how to connect him. And so I just put him on hold, which is not
the right thing to do, so a man as busy as Carl Rove doesn't have time to wait around
on hold and so he hung up on me and I was thoroughly embarrassed and, you know, just
kind of horrified and at the same time, "Carl Rove just hung up on me! This is fantastic!" So I was still excited about that, I couldn't
wait to tell my family what had happened. But that opportunity impacted me significantly. It gave me the chance to learn about a lot
of global issues and the one that really resonated the most was international women's and children's
issues. We were having a briefing one day, and the
president did not want any media allowed, so it was a closed briefing. The administration had invited and paid for
25 women from Afghanistan to come over to the U.S. for computer skills training, and
they were going to be in the U.S. for several months for this training and the idea was
that when they went back home they would have a skill that they could use in their home. And so the president was speaking to them
and as he often did he kind of came down from the podium and walked down, and he was just
basically just thanking them for being there and giving them a warm welcome and telling
them how happy he was to see them, and they did something that none of us anticipated,
no one expected them to do. They threw themselves down at his feet - these
25 women threw themselves. They were kissing his shoes and thanking him
and he was visibly uncomfortable and really trying to get them to stand up and wanted
to shake their hand, wanted to look them in the eye and show them the respect that they
had really been long overdue. But I was standing at the back of the room
and just watching this scene unfold, just seeing this response of women who had never
been given opportunity or respect before and witnessing the deep impression it made upon
them, just was an image that I could not forget. And so I knew that I wanted to work in this
area. First of all I felt, as a woman, I had a responsibility
to try to be a voice for other women around the world that didn't have the kind of voice
that I had, that don't live in a context where they're able to speak so freely. Secondly, as a human being I just thought
I had a basic responsibility to participate in these kinds of issues, and as a Christian,
I think we have an even greater opportunity, obligation, responsibility, to engage with
a world that is broken and deeply in need of hope. And so I began to look for jobs in that area. I had an opportunity with the Justice Department;
something about it didn't feel right, and then my father came to me and he said, "You
know, we're looking at launching this new arm of the ministry. It'd be called 'Wellspring International,'
and it would be the humanitarian arm of RZIM and reach out, participate in women's and
children's issues." And I said, "No! No thank you, I'm going to do my own thing,"
you know, I still really didn't want to go and work for the family ministry and he said,
"Okay." And so a couple weeks later he came back and
he said, "You still haven't found a job," and he said, "I'll respect your decision. This is your decision to make, but this sounds
like this is exactly what you want to do. You would have the chance to learn it from
the ground up to help get this thing started." And so I thought about it and I prayed about
it and I thought, "The only thing keeping me from this is really just kind of my sense
of pride." I think when you are, you know, the daughter,
the child, and you go to work for kind of the family organization you kind of live with
this need to be proving yourself. You're afraid that everyone else is going
to think that you're only there because you couldn't get another job. And I thought, "Okay, my pride is not enough
of a reason to turn down this opportunity." So I said, "Okay, I'll take this, I'll help
get it off the ground, I'll be there for a year." And this was 2004, so remember that. So I - when we started Wellspring, what we
wanted to do was basically serve as a bridge between donors - people who wanted to give
to these kinds of needs - and organizations overseas that were working with women and
children at risk. We felt there was a gap there because there
were so many people who want to participate but there's just been a growing sense of disillusionment
with non-profit organizations, and really some of that is earned, and so rightly so. And people aren't sure what happens to their
money, they aren't sure who actually gets it in the end. Does the person who needs it ever see it? And so we wanted to be able to be the eyes
and ears for donors. We would go do the ground work, we would identify
projects, we would do a thorough process of due diligence, we would review their records,
we would, you know, make sure that the need was legitimate and that they were meeting
that need with methods of integrity and then match donors to these projects. And so, my responsibility in the beginning
was largely to identify these organizations and begin the due diligence process. I knew that I was going to see some tragic
things; I was still shocked at just the horrible things that human beings can do to each other. We were going into areas looking at human
trafficking, prostitution, domestic violence, education needs, just outstanding poverty
needs. But the things - the horribleness that people
can do to each other, that just never - I don't even understand how it occurs to them
to think of doing these things. And so it was filled with this tragedy and
sorrow. I knew that I would see pain and darkness;
what I did not expect to see was beauty in some of the most unexpected places. And as I listened to the stories of others,
I began to understand and actually even to accept my own because the interesting thing
here is I don't even think I realized that at the time, but at the same time that I became
really just kind of convinced that I wanted to work in these international women's and
children's issues I was also at a place in my life of really just deep sorrow. Like life had not turned out the way that
it was supposed to, and there have been some severe heartache and honestly I didn't want
the life that was mine. Like I struggled - you know, you fight against
these things that you can't change, but every morning I would wake up and I'd think, "This
is not the life that I wanted, and I don't want to do this." And these things kind of converged and I really
didn't realize it. It is not that going and seeing someone else's
pain made me feel better, you know, to find someone who's in a worse situation. It wasn't that. But there was something about being around
brokenness that kind of felt like home, and felt familiar, and it got me out of my own
sense of brokenness, out of my own world and helped me look beyond that into someone else's
life. The first time I went to the Red Light district
in Amsterdam, I was overwhelmed. I had been to the Red Light district in Mumbai
before, which is the largest Red Light district in Asia. There are over 70,000 women in prostitution
there. Most of them had been trafficked so they're
actually behind bars. So as you walk through these dark, narrow
streets you just see these dark eyes looking at you from behind bars, and it's horrible. But there's a darkness to it. There's a seediness to it. Amsterdam, in contrast, was just like lights
and glamour. It was a celebration. There was music, there were guys high-fiving,
there were people laughing, and it just seemed so messed up because it's organized like a
shopping mall. There's a woman behind a window - there's
400 windows that line the street, a woman behind each one, and they're organized by
nationality. So if you want to see a woman from Russia
you go to this end of the street, if you want to see a woman from Nigeria, you go to this
end of the street. And it was just a mall, but it was human beings
that were for sale, and I felt so overwhelmed by it, and truthfully I felt intimidated too
as a woman to be there, because these women were kind of threatening to me if I was honest. These women threatened kind of my own sense
of security; they sort of represented something that kind of posed a threat to, you know,
if I had a relationship to someone that was in my life, that they posed a threat to that. That's how it made me feel. And then I got there and I just realized that
none of this was some, you know, personal affront against me, that all of these women
were struggling to live with decisions that they had made, bad decisions that maybe they
had made, but also decisions of things that had been done to them. All of them were simply trying to survive
their own life too. And as I listened to their stories, one thing
was overwhelming to me, because people often ask me if I'm talking about a girl that I
met in the Red Light District, they'll say, "Well was she in prostitution? Was she trafficked or was she there by choice?" And if I say she's there by choice I can visibly
see this disconnect ‘cause then we kind of feel like, "Okay, this really isn't as
much our problem, and she's kind of gotten herself into this." But when you hear their stories and you hear
what happened, when I heard their stories, I realized, instead of the things that are
different about us, how similar we were because if the same things that had happened to them
had happened to me, I felt pretty sure that I would be on the same side of the window. And so as I began this work and began to understand
these issues that were going on and engage with these issues and start to see my own
story a little bit more, I uncovered something that I didn't expect and that was just the
beauty in the midst of a very real darkness out there. So some of the lessons that I've learned or
have been learning along the way: the first one is this issue of Kingdom work versus non-Kingdom
work. I don't think there is such a distinction,
and I think when we kind of put those terms together we're creating a false distinction
that doesn't really exist. As Christians, wherever we are, wherever God
places us is our place of ministry, because ministry's about building relationships, it
is about reflecting, it is about revealing the love of Christ and we are to do that wherever
we find ourselves. The fact is you don't have to go around the
world to find someone who is broken and someone who is hurting. The truth is they're usually sitting right
next to you. So wherever God calls you to, I would just
encourage you to feel confident that that is your place of ministry and you are playing
a very valuable role in doing that. The second important factor is identifying
the particularity of our calling. Where is it that God wants us to be? When I look at my path, it's really more of
a winding staircase than a direct route, and sometimes I've really felt like I was floundering,
but as J.R.R. Tolkien says, “not all those who wander
are lost.” In fact, when I had the chance to write the
book that's actually probably at the time when I was writing all of these things down. I've never really been a journaler. It kind of scares me, I kind of feel like
things are safer in my head. But when I had to write the book and kind
of write out these stories, I actually noticed these threads that I hadn't even really recognized
before, and you think, "Oh, what do you know, there was this play on all along." But I think that God uses our ambitions, our
interests, our gifts, and even our wounds to equip us to respond to a purpose that is
specific to each one of us. I was speaking recently at a Youth for Christ
conference, it was to their staff, and I was saying to them - and I meant this in all seriousness
- I would be more intimidated to walk into a youth rally than I am to walk into a brothel
in some of these Red Light districts, and that's the truth. But I think what that says is actually it
speaks to the individual wiring and individual purpose that God gives each one of us. No task is less than another, but God gives
you the burden and the ability to communicate in the place that He has for you. And so the task for each one of us is really
to find the specificity of God's call in our life, it's to find the particularity of our
calling and this way every one of our lives is ultimately an individual adventure of finding
our place in God's plan. I read a book a couple of years ago called
"The Agony and the Ecstasy." It is the biography of Michelangelo. I absolutely I loved it. But there's one story in there, some dialogue
back and forth that was so meaningful to me. A young Michelangelo was debating with his
friends about whether the superior art was painting or sculpture, and his friends were
saying that it was painting because you can portray the entire universe, you have to have
the creativity and skill to create the illusion of a third dimension, you have to anticipate
color and how it's going to look on a canvas. And Michelangelo actually was fighting back
tears because he thought that sculpture comes close to true form. It is three-dimensional, "Doesn't art become
noble to the degree to which it represents the truth?" he asked. "And if a painter blundered, what did he do?" he said. He patched and repaired and covered over with
another layer of paint. The sculptor, on the contrary, had to see
within the marble the form that it held. He could not glue back broken parts. "That's why there are no more sculptors,"
he said, because it took a thousand times more accuracy and judgment and vision. Now I am not one who can create art, I am
one who can just appreciate it, but when I read this passage I was really intrigued and
I wanted to understand about the art forms more to fully understand what he was saying
here. And so I wrote a friend who is a painter and
an amazing artist, and her words brought tears to my eyes. "It is true," she said. "The painter has the option to rethink, to
reconsider his direction, statement, his intensity, and his heart left on the canvas for the world
to see. On the other hand, a sculptor must work with
inspired insight," she explained. "The vision of the end must be complete before
he ever even begins. The first blows of his chisel cannot be gentle,
and in their harshness they must be accurate. There are no do-overs in sculpture," she conceded. "If he errs, the marble can either become
a new creation or it will remain a lifeless shard of stone, but it cannot return to what
it is, what it was. It can be shaped into something new, not necessarily
less than what it was before, ever-different in form but ever-true to its essence." God is our master sculptor. He is concerned about the essence of who we
are, the form that we have, and the masterpiece is the outcome of that essence in the capable
hands of the ultimate artist. When we look back and we see the threads woven
together of our career path, of our personal story filled with its setbacks and bruises,
I think we will see clear demonstrations of the plan and the master sculptor at work. So how does that affect the way that we live
our lives? The first thing I want to talk about is character. I think we can tend to think if we work in
ministry that it might be easier in some ways because we want to believe that we treat each
other differently. My friends and I often joke that it would
be a great reality show, actually, to start a reality show, "The Ministry" and kind of
all the ins and outs that go on there. And I have a friend that also works in ministry,
she was saying that she was having a meeting recently and someone in the meeting was saying
that she'd been in the corporate world for 20 years and had left there and come into
ministry. She said, "You know, I really expected there
to be a bigger difference. I expected people to be a lot nicer to each
other, but there's still some of the same issues that happened in ministry that happen
in the corporate world." And so someone else there said, "Well, it's
because Christians are really - we're still human beings, and, you know, we still make
those mistakes." And she said, "I know, that's really true." And the thing is, it is true. We are human beings. We will make mistakes. We are going to fail, but shouldn't there
be some kind of difference? Shouldn't people be able to see there's a
difference in the way that we live our lives? We speak of the transforming power of Christ,
they should see that in our life, in the way we treat each other, in the choices that we
make. They should see this in the way we approach
our job and the grace that we show to others. In '94, Mother Theresa was a speaker at the
National Prayer Breakfast and some of you might have heard this story, but she was actually
- she either didn't get the memo or she probably did get the memo and just didn't worry about
it, but you're not supposed to really talk about anything too controversial. And Mother Theresa spoke the entire time about
abortion and the horror of what is going on with abortion and what we're doing, and she
was very bold in what she called out to the U.S. to respond to this crisis that was going
on. And a reporter afterwards said to President
Clinton, "Well, what did you think about what Mother Theresa said?" And President Clinton said this. He said, "It is very difficult to argue with
a life so well-lived." The way we live our life is a powerful witness
even before we get to the place we are trying to preach a sermon or trying to get to that
point of converting someone. They should see a difference in the way we
live. Secondly, the world knows what we are against,
but do they know what we are for as Christians? Do they know that our faith is one that values
the sanctity of every human life? Do they know that in the examples of Jesus
Christ, we have this person who was a radical in his time for His treatment, His respect
of women, the way He engaged with them, the way He included them. Can we articulate, can we demonstrate what
we are for? And I think that's an important way to engage
with the world around us right now. To be able to do that, I think we have to
truly understand our faith. God gave us the gift of intelligent thinking
and the gift of a faith that is rational; that is truth. I think there was a time in the public square
where you could just say because of your belief in God and that was enough of an answer for
someone, but that's not true now, and society is so antagonistic toward Christianity. It requires more from us in the way that we
articulate our faith, even in the way that we understand it ourselves, because the questions
are fierce. Whether it's social issues, whether it's understanding
where God is in the presence of human suffering in these horrible things going on around the
world. Wellspring is a part of RZIM, Ravi Zacharias's
International Ministries, and that's a ministry that focuses on apologetics or a defense of
the Christian faith. "Helping the thinker believe; helping the
believer think" is the line that we use. Being able to engage with people in that raw
place of real living and address, in a meaningful and intelligent and thoughtful way, the questions
from a world that is hurting and in desperate need of hope is absolutely critical. But it's not just having the answers; the
way we communicate is so important to our message. My dad says - he grew up in India - he says
that there is a proverb there that says, "There is no point giving someone a rose to smell
if you just cut off their nose." And I think that's so important for all of
us. One of the first times I was in the Red Light
district in Amsterdam, I was going around with a woman who works for an organization
called "Scarlet Chord," and they're there to be available to women working in the Red
Light District. They build relationships with them and if
the woman makes a decision to leave they're there to help them to leave both with security
and financial issues and that kind of thing. And as we were walking through there, one
of the girls invited us in and she opened the door and flipped off the red light and
invited us to come inside. As we talked to her, I don't have time to
tell you her story. She had this tragic story of the way that
she ended up in prostitution, and there were times when she seemed fragile and childlike
and other times where she was fierce and almost kind of frightening. She said, "You know I dream of just, you know,
setting these men on fire and throwing them into the canal one day and drowning them,"
and, you know, some of these - some of the things she was saying were kind of scary. But my friend said to her, "You know, have
you ever thought about going to church?" And she looked at us and she said, "You tell
me. If I go to one of your churches, will they
see me as a prostitute or as a woman?" And I didn't answer because I'm not sure I'm
necessarily proud of that answer, but my friend was honest with her and said, "Well some would
see you as a prostitute but that's not how Jesus would see you. And others will come around you and support
you." And she shook her head and she said, "No. The problem with your people is they tell
me I should leave, but they never want to let me forget where I came from either." And I remember in that moment actually praying
like, "Lord, help me never to forget that," because she's right. We do it to each other and we do it to others
as well. How we respond is important or we end up doing
more harm for the gospel than good. How does our calling impact the larger world
around us? As we look at these global atrocities today,
it requires a response I think from each one of us. But I think there's the question of "how?" How do we all get involved in this? The first thing I want to encourage everyone,
I think it's important to stay informed. That's actually one of the things I loved
about D.C. There's just information all around, but understanding
these issues and knowing what's going on so that you can dialogue, that you can be that
voice for other people that don't have a voice of their own. A lot of times men I think are really interested
and want to do something there in human trafficking, but for men it's actually a little bit harder. A guy can't say, you know, go do what I do
and go to Amsterdam and walk into a brothel there. And so I think men are wanting to participate
and they don't know how, but to men I actually - I want to encourage each one of you because
I think you have a very, I think particular role in this. Because I think a man who engages in this
issue, who serves as a voice for women who have been abused, who have been exploited
and treated these ways, I think you can accomplish a kind of healing in those women that other
women can't do. You are giving them something else to look
at. They've only known one type of man in many
cases, and you can play a part in helping to restore their faith in what a man can and
should be to them. There are some that are able to offer financial
support, some of you will go do internships overseas and offer your skills. For those that stay home, these issues are
not as far away from us as we think. I was on a talk show in Toronto a couple weeks
ago and the opening question to me was, "What do you think of this issue of sex-selective
abortion, what does it say about society?" And some of you might be aware about this,
but sex-selective abortion is when couples are choosing to abort a baby if it is a girl
because they would prefer a son. In the country of India alone it is estimated
that there have been 20 to 30 million missing women due to sex-selective abortion already. In China it's closer to 40 million. If this was a race or anything else we would
call it genocide and it would be the worst genocide in history. What's happening in this area is tragic and
catastrophic and it's leading to all kinds of problems in these countries because it's
throwing off the ratio of men to women, so then when men get to marrying age there aren't
enough women to marry. So they're marrying off women younger and
younger. They're bride sharing. It's increasing trafficking. It's increasing rape. It's lowered the level of the economic level
in the cities and in the countries themselves. This is a huge problem and is actually growing
in North America. So the world is full of these issues that
are right close to home. The issue of pornography, I want to mention. This is an issue that I feel so strongly about
and one that I think is really affecting us today. They say that over 90 percent of men in the
church are wrestling with this. This is a significant issue, and I'm not saying
that it is the same as human trafficking but they're related, not just in a financial way
but they're related in their issues, the objectification of women, the exploitation of sexuality of
the viewer of the woman being viewed. This is an issue that I think for us to deal
with on a global scale authentically we have to begin by dealing with it at home, within
ourselves, within our church, within our community. I'll try to tell you this story quickly before
wrapping up. I know all of us feel a sense of how do you
engage with this? How do we fix these kinds of huge problems? And I think we really have to change our definition
of success. Lindsay and I were talking about this this
morning. I think when we look at these things we want
to say, "What's the statistic?" I remember one of the first times I went to
Thailand, I said, "How many women that, you know, you help leave prostitution, how many
of them stay out of prostitution?" And he said, "Look, if you're asking me if
it's a good financial investment, it's not. It doesn't work that way. If these were the numbers for the stock market,
like, I wouldn't invest. You have to look at this as a human being
and every life you're able to change matters," and I genuinely feel that way. If everything we did helped one girl leave
this lifestyle, leave that kind of life, then it would be worth it to me and we have to
change our definitions of success. None of these things are quick fixes. We are entering a journey. That's what you are doing when you get involved
in these humanitarian issues. You're entering a journey with someone else
toward healing, and you're going to be there with them for the long haul. So how do we effect that? I think we have some strengths that we don't
even realize. I went to Cape Town, on one of my first trips
to South Africa, and we went to a home for children who had been mentally challenged. This was a not easy place for me, not because
the children made me uncomfortable but because I wasn't sure what to do for them. I felt so inadequate, I was afraid of going
up and over-estimating their ability and so wounding something, or under-estimating their
ability and wounding something and I didn't know what to do. And there was a boy in the corner - he looked
like he was about eight years old - strapped to a board. And I went, I slipped my bag off and I knelt
down and he couldn't speak and the woman said to me, explained to me that he had been dropped
on his head as a child by a parent who had been drunk and was paralyzed from the neck
down, couldn't communicate at all. And so I kneeled down next to him and not
knowing what else to do, like I just stroked his forehead. And slowly, like his eyelids just started
to kind of flutter, and then slowly, slowly these tears just started to run down his face. And I remember just sitting there, I don't
even know how long it was, and finally they told me it was time to go and I didn't know
how to get up and leave and I even, like, judged myself for being able to do it. And when I finally pulled my hand back, that's
the first time his eyes kind of darted over and looked at me and I felt like he was asking
me why I had stopped, like why I wasn't doing that anymore. And I couldn't get his face out of my head. I cried myself to sleep that night. I cried because he was strapped to a board. I cried because I had to take my hand away
from his cheek. I cried because of the overwhelming emotion
of what I had witnessed. I felt like I had witnessed something powerful. It transcended language. It transcended these limitations. It was kind of a language of humanity. It was the power of the human touch and it's
ability to reach deep inside the soul. And God is not always there in the form that
we want, in the form of an answer that we want or a cure that we seek, but He is there
in that power of human touch and in the power of a caring heart that simply says, "I'm sorry." Each one of us has a unique calling, a mission
field, and it's made up of the people that are around us. We are a player in the larger world and community
that we are a part of. Sometimes it will need an answer from us,
sometimes it will just need our grief, our compassion, our touch, and it requires wisdom
to recognize the difference. But God has written your story to equip you
to play a significant role. When I was little, one of my parent's favorite
movies was "Chariots of Fire," and I'm sure some of you have heard this story before. But it's a movie about the Scottish Olympic
runner Eric Liddell and there's a scene in there where his sister is trying to discourage
him from running a race. They were in ministry together and Eric felt
called to China and she's discouraging him from running this race, and Eric says to her,
"Jenny, God has made me for a purpose. He's made me for China, but he has also made
me fast, and when I run I feel His pleasure." As we recognize and understand our particular
calling, when we run we will feel His pleasure and there we will find our purpose. So I wish you all the best in your journey
towards that as I continue mine. Thank you.
