Let our hearts be hungry
Love Help Teach Posted on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 05:12AM By Alicia Jones
I know life is more than having and not having. I understand that poverty exists. I believe God blesses the poor with rich faith. But still, I feel there is such a great disparity between the world of the poor and the world of the rich.
A Roma home for six people.
A home in downtown Munkács
How can I report what I have experienced in my first two months living in Ukraine? My Roma friends ask me for simple things. One asks for a pair of shoes. Another asks me to teach her English. One women asks for $100 to buy medicine for a lump in her chest. She even shows me the x-ray from the hospital.
Some young girls keep begging me to visit them or they ask if they can visit me. One woman asks me to help start a kindergarten in her village. A weary couple just asks for a quiet and dry place to rest for a few minutes after bringing their sick child to town to see the doctor.
As I pray for wisdom from God as to how to respond to every request, I become more and more hungry myself. I begin to ask fervently for his kingdom to come. My heart longs for the day when “the ransomed of the LORD will return and come to Zion with singing, crowned with unending joy. Joy and gladness will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee” (Isaiah 35:10).
I look around at these scenes and just know that the disparity should not be, it is a result of human sin. I hold to the hope that the great signing and sorrow that my Roma friends face will one day be fully replaced with joy and gladness. Even now, they come to their churches with singing and for a moment I can see on their heads crowns of unending joy. And I praise God that no matter how much you have or don’t have He will give you a crown of unending joy if you hunger for Him.
