A Little Humble Pie

Let me tell you a little bit more about how we came to sponsor Kimenyi and how that relates to my journey in showing mercy.

The day it happened – the day God spoke to my heart – started with Charles and I having to consider committing to spend $45 a month on our grown children. We are already spending money regularly on several family members, so we are already stretched. But this would also really help them.

For those of you who don’t know me, you need to know that my earthly nature is to be extremely selfish and self-centered. Anything good that comes through me is purely Divine intervention. And that day, my selfish nature was just screaming. “Why don’t you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do it yourself? Why do you keep getting yourself into these situations? When are you going to be able to take care of yourselves?” On and on. This is coming from the mind of a woman who has been constantly helped in many ways by family. So it was somewhat like the Bible story of the servant who was forgiven much but then turned around and did not forgive his fellow (Matt 18:23-35). And if this parable had been in my conscious thought at that point, I would have seen that the word “mercy” is mentioned again in that passage. But I wasn’t thinking of much more than myself at that point.

That same day I read a blog post by a Christian woman who pointed out how petty some of our disagreements are when we should be spending our time worrying about those who have far less than we do. She had a link to Compassion on her blog and I know that she has advocated for them as a sponsoring agency. And I felt heavily that hand of God on me right at that moment. I knew I was supposed to look at these children right then. I went to the Compassion home page to see what was involved in sponsoring a child. $38 a month. Less than what we were talking about giving our children. And I thought, “see there? God is saying that we should spend that money more wisely by sponsoring this child”. Now, that is not exactly what God was saying, but that was all I could hear at that moment.

Kimenyi!!!

So, in the last post, I asked you to watch a video before we moved on to new developments. If you didn’t, don’t worry. It was great stuff, but you can appreciate what comes next without it. I will tell you that I received the link to that video in an email from the Compassion International blog. That is important because…

WE ARE SPONSORING A CHILD!!!

I did not know how excited I would be for us to sponsor a child, but when I hit “send” on that online form, I got tingles all over! I felt like we had just expanded our family, not just by one, but by 5, because we will love his whole family!!!

How we came to be sponsors is all wrapped up in this continuing journey of learning to show and LOVE mercy. I will share the details of that in another post, but right now I just want to tell you about this child.

Stand Against the Schemes of the Devil

This link will take you to a video that is about 33 minutes long, so you'll need to make time for listening. But I want to share it with you because it just an awesome lesson. It is also a great way to prepare you for what comes next in my story.

Stand Against the Schemes of the Devil