Shiny & Bright

I can't seem to stop thinking about this sweet little face. This is the face of one of the children I met during my time in Kenya. Before I left for Africa I thought that once I had gone & spent time there upon my return home I'd change a lot of things in my life. I'm not sure if I thought I'd give away everything I own or adopt three more Compassion International children or what it would look like to live differently post Africa. Is this missions opportunity suppose to serve as a wake up call? Honestly, from the outside looking in my life probably doesn't look too different from the way it was before I went to Kenya. I'm still processing what my experience and journey was like there. I'm still sorting through the many ways God tugged on my heart those 15 days.

The truth is that my days are different now because of a change on the inside...my heart is not the same. There aren't many mornings that my thoughts don't turn quickly to the faces of the children. I was blessed to have met hundreds of those faces. I saw them sing, dance, play and worship. I was able to learn some of their names...but mostly it was just the faces. They all held one thing in common--amazing smiles.

Smiles so shiny and bright sometimes it would take my breathe away when they were all surrounding me to get a spot on my lap or to touch my hair or to look at my camera. Beautiful smiles so shiny and bright. Some mornings as I pray for them a saddness washes over me because I feel so far away from those shiny and bright little faces. In Psalm 82 there is a short piece of verse 6 that says: "Children of the Most High, all of you." When I read that this morning my mind turned back to those shiny and bright smiles. The comfort and joy in being unified together as God's children. When I think about the kids back in Kenya I'm reminded also of one of my favorite passages from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis,

"Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes everyday and eath of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and your find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

I am thanking God extra today for those little faces that remind me to continue to look to Christ first and formeost. They remind me that sometimes the greatest gift you can offer to others is a smile that shines the light of Jesus.