Hope in the Middle of the Mess

Leaders, teachers: What you’re doing does make a difference.

My daughter works with a refugee program and was asked to go with a co-worker to pick up some kids for a weekly activity. The regularly-scheduled transportation wasn’t available.

They went to the first apartment, met the mom, and got the kids. “You need to stop downstairs,” the mom said. “Some of those children go too.”

In the words of my daughter:

The mom handed me the kids from the upstairs apartment and told me there were more kids in the first floor apartment. So we went downstairs. When I knocked, the door opened to the worst-looking room I’ve ever seen with about six kids running around—no adults. There was a ratty, torn mattress in the corner and that was it for the furniture except for a blaring TV. It was so sad.

Then I noticed a piece of paper, and I recognized it as a page from a Sparks book. I asked who went to Sparks and one little girl jumped up and down and said, “Me! Me!”

That was such a sad room and I was upset by the desperation and confusion in front of me, but there was a page with Scripture on it—right in the middle of it all.

We don’t always know the circumstances in which the clubbers live.

We don’t always know what happens to the books (or the pages of the book).

We don’t always understand that Awana is the highlight of the week for many of these kids.

But we can pray.
And we can be faithful.
And we can care.

Because that page from a Sparks’ book, that one verse of Scripture, might be the one fragment of hope and encouragement in the middle of the mess.