hands and feet

Having just returned from a mission trip to the East Coast with the youth group to help people who's homes have been scarred and beaten by hurricane Sandy last year, my mind continues to swim with all my experiences.

I think of the woman who's house we painted, of how she has been a survivor for so long already, having lived through Nazi concentration camps yet losing part of a limb in the process. How her spirit radiates but under the surface you can feel the scars that life has left. She told stories of how the people that live across the street were able to got upstairs in their houses when the water rose, but not the lady in the one story house. It sits heavy on my heart...

There was also a house we went to work on the gutters...a cute little house. There was a beautiful stone angel and yellow flowers in the front up against the house, but there were also weeds, they were more than a foot high. Just pull the weeds and it would be picture perfect I thought. But then we walked inside, that is where it sunk in. This house is unlivable, gutted, dark and very empty. How does this happen. Tragedy hits and it is the outside that is taken care of when the inside is screaming for repair.  I think of how so many people go through life like this. They maintain an outward appearance of normalcy, picture perfect. Just clean it up a little when things get rough and we'll be alright. But the inside is empty and dark. Too many are hurting and we don't know because we don't see it. We need to look into the windows of their hearts to be able to see inside. Otherwise, no one will know.

I think of the little old lady who's house needs so very much work, it did not even have a floor. How she just soaked up all the attention of those working to rebuild her home. How just as much as she needs her home rebuilt, she also needs relationships, her heart was not full, it was in need.

How much longer can we allow ourselves to be complacent, to just be. We are ok, we have a roof and food and family. Too many people are hurting and have scars and truly need someone to just care and listen.

We went on a mission trip to be the hands and feet of Jesus on the other side of the country. I pray we have come back home and not forgotten that here in our own town, in our own schools, our church and our home, we are still called...be the hands and feet.