When Elijah was born, I found myself asking a lot of questions: Why me? Why do all my friends have perfectly normal birthing stories with healthy, fat bouncy babies, and I'm living in a nightmare? Why do WE have to be the ones who fight off life-threatening diseases and have to be hospitalized for days, weeks, months? What did I do to deserve this? I found myself examining my life, trying to find what I did wrong, identify what sin I was being punished for, see where my story diverged from everyone else's. My head was an unpleasant place to be.
Yesterday, I watched a report on missionary work overseas while my now-healthy little boy was climbing all over me and yelling in my ear. It was admittedly difficult to hear what they were saying over his cacophony, but I got the gist. There was a lot of work going on in slums of major cities, lives and souls being touched and restored in the darkest places among the poorest of the poor. As I heard story after story of people who live without food for days, or who die of exposure in the streets, I looked at my beautiful little boy and started asking myself the same question with a very different spirit.
Why him? Why is Elijah alive? Why was he born in a country where he could receive hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical care to save his life, while other babies are starving and freezing to death on the streets? Why was so much done to spare this one little person while thousands die elsewhere?
As I thought these thoughts with my sweet little boy playing on my lap, I resolved to teach him of his privilege, not so that he will feel guilty, but that he will feel appreciative. I want him to know how richly he has been blessed, so that when he starts to feel sorry for himself, as I often do, he can be reminded of how merciful our God was in giving him the life he has. I want to teach him, in word and example, that this rich life we have is not ours to waste or squander, but is God's to give to others. I hope I teach him well to hold our riches with a loose hand, whether it's our money or our time or the hope of the Good News that lives in us, ready in a moment to shower them on the hurting people who need them.
I don't know why God spared my son. I hope it's because of the person he will become. I hope it's because he will have much to give the world and that he will give it freely. I hope I'm up to the task of raising him, when I fall short so often of being at all worthy of the responsibility.
So I muse, pregnant with my second child at 6 in the morning on my husband's birthday, waiting for my son to wake up in a large, air-conditioned house in Florida, USA.
Yes, we have been abundantly blessed. I don't know why we have so much, but I do know what we're going to do with it.
