A Love Like That

I want to share something with you, not to make me look great or anything.  I am just so overwhelmed by this thought, I have to share it.  I have been thinking a lot lately about the passion of my heart:  to work with orphans.  I don’t know if I have outright said this or not, but what I want to do for the rest of my life is to run an orphanage in central Africa.  It is my dream to have it be a family style home, so the kids can know what it is like to have a mom and a dad.  I want to give them an education, health care, and the opportunity to someday go to college or trade school and make a difference in their communities.  I want to give children the opportunity to know God’s love for them, to know what it means to have a family, and the chance to dream and become everything they were created to be.

This is a vision that I have had since high school, and God has confirmed it in many ways over the years.  You know what is so unusual about this?  God actually asked me what I wanted to do with my life, and this was my answer.  He has truly blessed my dream, and I know that someday He will allow me the opportunity to do this.  He has given me such an intense passion for orphan care, I can literally hardly contain myself.

Mother Teresa has always been my “hero” so to speak.  I know this sounds really cliché, but she truly lived the kind of life I desire to live.  She gave everything of herself to love those who could never give back to her what she had sacrificed for them, and ultimately for Jesus.

Malcom Muggeridge wrote in his book Something Beautiful for God about Mother Teresa with these words:

“ [She was a woman] with this Christian love shining about her; in her heart and on her lips.  Just prepared to follow her Lord, and in accordance with His instructions, regard every derelict left to die in the streets as Him; to hear in the cry of every abandoned child, even in the tiny squeak of the discarded fetus, the cry of the Bethlehem child; to recognize in every leper’s stumps the hands which once touched sightless eyes and made them see, rested on distracted heads and made them calm, brought health to sick flesh and twisted limbs.”

I really want a love like that.