Chosen!

Thousands of children live in Bulgaria’s orphanage… left alone in the presence of strangers, given minimal care and enough food to keep them alive, but not always to completely nourish them.  No loving arms to hold them, no kisses to make their booboos better. There are no shouts of “LOOK, Mom” as they do summersaults; indeed, no summersaults are to be seen – fun is a waste of valuable energy. Every aspect of life in these institutions (for they cannot be called homes) is utilitarian – food is for nourishment, baths are for cleansing, and time is for existing. No yummy treats, no splashing, bath-time games, no entertainment or play to while away the hours between meals and sleep, and no love. The orphanages of Bulgaria are closer in nature to our prisons than to our childcare.

As brutal as these orphanages may seem to us, they are meeting a vital need. So many children would be on the streets, or worse, if not for their existence. So many children left alone with no one to care for them – and these orphanages are their only hope for survival. Why so many? Where are these children’s parents? Did they die in some massive war, some all-consuming plague?

The surprising answer is that vast majority of these children have at least one living parent. Bulgaria is a poor nation and poverty makes people desperate and sometimes inhumanly uncaring. Parents abandon their children, some thinking that they are better off in the orphanage, some just wanting to rid themselves of hungry, ever crying, mouths they never wanted in the first place. Some of these children are fortunate – they are able to be returned to their parents or other relatives once their financial conditions improve. Some are adopted into happy Bulgarian homes.

It’s the leftovers I’m interested in though! The ones that never find their way home, abandoned and forgotten, unwanted, unloved. The ones that have nothing to look forward to but the same monotonous routines of the orphanage all the days of their childhood. So hopeless that they don’t even know what it means to hope. It makes me want to shout out to them across the sea, “Here! With us you will find a true home! With us you will experience love as deep as any parent could have for their most precious child! With us you with have laughter, delight, and all things a child should treasure!” If we could afford it, we would take dozens and dozens of these children, as far as we could spread our love and time. Right now, however, we are starting with one… and only the Lord knows what the future holds. Right now, though, we will take our one child from grays of the institutional life and show to them a life filled with the million different colors of love!

This is our calling –to preach good tidings to the meek, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound! We are all called to this as ambassadors of Christ – but the expression of this varies from person to person and even from season to season in our lives. But for us, for now, this is our purpose, our calling – we are to take a little child and share him or her with the good news of love, family, and joy! We are to bind up his or her broken life, bring healing to his or her wounds – physically, emotionally, etc. We are to give to them the freedom of a life to be lived – yes, freed from the walls of their orphanage, but more importantly freed from the stigma and sting of abandonment, freed from the blight of hopelessness, and freed from a childhood without love! No longer will he or she be a “leftover”… he or she will be the first chosen, the cream of our crop!