planting seeds

I just now had a conversation with a Guatemalan woman here, who is visiting her uncle and aunt at CB for the day, about the importance of love in the lives of very young children -- that even though this love seems like such a menial and tiresome task, it is so so utterly important for these children to experience it. She reminded me that the Lord is always working, that He blesses the work of those who serve Him, and that loving children is like planting a seed in their lives which they will carry with them all their days into eternity. So, while I may become weary and impatient on a regular basis, I can rest in the knowledge that the Lord is using my work here in ways not visible to me. And, at the end of the day, I really could not ask for more than that Lord uses me.

Please continue to pray that I would experience the Lord's joy in everyday tasks, and for the grace to serve in humility and use my words to love on my house parents and fellow workers. I cannot think of a more important thing that we can do, as humans and as Christians, than to pray, pray, pray.

I'll close here with one of my favorite poems, which I am now reading with a fresh perspective that the Lord sleeps "as a tiny seed" in what is small:


I find you, Lord, in all Things and in all
my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life;
as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small
and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.
The wondrous game that power plays with Things
is to move in such submission through the world:
groping in roots and growing thick in trunks
and in treetops like a rising from the dead.
-Rainer Maria Rilke