Spacious Places
"He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me."
--- 2 Samuel 22:20 (NIV)
My senior Pastors always pray over me that I would dwell in a spacious place, for a girl like me it would almost seem impossible. I’m a stress head by trade, I run at a hundred miles an hour, I fill up my days and don’t leave much room for breathers, all the while trying to carry the world’s problems on my shoulders, resulting in burn outs, exhaustion and sickness. The past year I’ve been completing my final year of schooling, juggling way too many jobs to save for future mission trips, transitioning churches and facing ongoing sickness because of all this. Mid-June the Lord placed on my heart for me to venture back to the Philippines as my “schoolies” trip.
As we travel down the streets in the Safe Haven van, little ones pushing around to get a seat on Ate’s Lap, the car filled with laughter and games, congested traffic surrounding us, homeless beggars lingering around all the cars, malnourished children laying alone on the side walk, I realised this was the harsh reality of the Philippines that you can easily become desensitised to.
The following day I tagged along on the Safe Haven medical clinic trip to Tondo, a settlement situated on a rubbish tip on the harbour. We ventured through the muddy streets towards the church that was built on the harbour where half the rooms where under water from flooding. Death was a common reality for these people; babies without nappies ran around, filled with a pot belly of worms, children too weak to walk from treatable TB all faced me. I held children’s hands as they got their infected ears treated, and prayed for each child as they cycled through. The sight left me overwhelmed by the extreme poverty, corruption and turmoil this country faced, the expanse of the issue left me breathless, and for a moment, I felt completely powerless, unable to make any difference that might even begin to scratch the surface of needs for these peoples. What was the point of me being here?
As I wrestled with this ‘truth’ I had made in my head, I watched the little things Safe Haven did for their kids to make them feel loved and valued. Simple things like putting gel in a kid’s hair before they went out, celebrating the kid’s birthdays with cake and presents, immunisations to prevent sickness, Jujitsu as an extra circular activity - giving them a home and a family where they are seen, heard and loved, something they had previously never experienced. These children, coming from a background of abuse and neglect, each scarred in one way or another, but each slowly being mending and healed by the love of our Jesus, showed me the power in quality over quantity care.
Christ hasn’t called us to change the world on our own. We are a part of a body, each playing our part to create change, one life at a time. And that’s enough. My spacious place was found in this realisation, that I, limited in what I can do, am still able to play my part to change the world. The peace that comes with this is immeasurable, allowing me to serve and love each individual person that I come across without the stress of having to fix everything. I can operate in freedom, knowing that what I am able to do is all that is required of me, and together, we can change the world, one life at a time. This is my spacious place which He graciously gave to me.