Breathless Haste

A week or so later, I showed the picture of the Malawian boy in his ragged shirt to a friend. She handed back the photo, and as I stared at this African boy, the face of a little American boy came to my mind. Continents and decades apart, but they looked like they could have been brothers. The American face that came to my mind was that of a little boy I played with every day after school on the farm. We played dodgeball and danced together outside his two-room concrete block home. His home was in the shadow of my large, five-bedroom, two-story home sitting on 150 acres of farmland. His father worked in the tobacco and cotton fields of our farm, and his mother worked in our home, cleaning, cooking, and caring for our family. This little boy was my best friend growing up.

I realized that God’s upper story and my lower story had just collided. The upper story of God’s work of restoration in the world, meeting the needs of kids in Africa, and my lower story, growing up on a farm as a child, had just collided. God can use all of our stories for His purposes.