lenten journey, day 31 — a prayer for street children

Tonight, while we are snuggled up in our comfortable beds in our comfortable homes in our safe neigh- borhoods in some of the wealthiest nations on earth, an estimated 200 million street children will be bedding down in conditions that we would deem too awful for our pets.

They’ll be curling up in cardboard boxes (if they’re lucky), in doorways, under bridges, and even in sewers. Tomorrow when they awaken, they’ll begin another day of survival of the fittest—stealing, fighting, turning tricks, using and selling drugs, sometimes even killing to survive.

If you need any more evidence that we live in a broken, fallen, sin-corrupted world (I doubt that you do…), look no farther than the streets of India, Colombia, Russia, South Africa, and countless other nations where orphaned and abandoned children as young as two years old live like animals.

How God must grieve over the loneliness and desperation of these children. Where the world sees a filthy urchin, God sees a precious child created in his image. We see their disposable lives, God sees their eternal souls. The communities in which these children roam see a problem that needs to be fixed, but God sees a child who needs to be loved.

Yes, God sees these least-of-the-least through eyes of pure, complete, passionate love. And that is why, even in the midst of this darkest of injustices, there is a light that shines. God is raising up believers to go out in the name of Jesus to love, feed, shelter, and rescue street children.

Consider this story of God’s power to move the human heart from selfish ambition to selfless kindness: A very rich businessman in Bogotá, Colombia, witnessed a little homeless girl get killed while she was running to pick up an empty box to sleep on. God changed his heart and his life in that moment. This wealthy man now dons scuba gear and descends into the sewers every night to search for abandoned children living in the most squalid conditions imaginable. He gives food, clothes, education and jobs to as many as he can.

Yes, many children suffer terribly because destructive sin entered a world meant for greater, more beautiful things. But God is not far off. He is as close as the one who reaches out to love the unlovable and rescue the lost, just as we have been loved and rescued by the King above all kings. And when that happens, right there, in the middle of darkness and poverty and hunger, a holy light shines and the Kingdom of God gets just a little bit bigger here in this fallen world.

Lord, would you wrap all the lonely street children up in a blanket of your love tonight? Would you send them dreams of hope and rescue? And then would you make those dreams come true? Jesus, you always seemed to hang around the places where orphaned children, and lepers, and the blind, and the lame lived their desperate and squalid lives. You reached out to the broken with compassion, love and healing. Then, because you knew that a healed body is not worth that much if the soul remains lost, you gave up your life to ransom our sin-stained lives from the pit. Jesus, use me to touch the hurting people of this world like you did. Show me how I can stop typing, get up off my comfortable office chair, and bring love and hope to those who need it most. I don’t want to waste my life in the comfort of my own home anymore. Jesus, send me out. Yes, and amen.

The poorest of the poor will find pasture, and the needy will lie down in safety. — Isaiah 14:30a

But Jesus called the children to him and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” — Luke 18:16