After the first World War, a 100 years ago, the United States gave vast sums of money to the dislocated orphans of Europe, but they still didn’t have enough money to meet the staggering need.
In one of the places where they had set up an orphanage with funds from the States, a man came in leading a little girl. He was very thin, obviously suffering from starvation.
The little girl also showed signs of malnutrition, eyes too large, her little abdomen distended, and her thin little legs and arms too small and too thin for her age. The man led her in and said to the person in charge, “I would like you to take in my little girl.”
The official at the desk asked him if she was his daughter and he said, “Yes.” He asked if the mother had been killed in the war and again the man said, “Yes.” The official then said, “We’re very sorry, but our rule here is that only full orphans can receive any help. If one of the parents is living then we can’t take responsibility, because we just don’t have enough room. There are too many full orphans for us to take a half-orphan.”
The father looked down at his little girl, and then he turned and said, “You don’t understand. I’m sick. I was in a German prison during the war. I was half-starved, and now I can’t work. I can barely stagger around. I brought her down for you to take care of her.”
And again the official said, “We’re sorry sir, but there’s nothing we can do. That’s the rule. We only care for full orphans.”
The father thought for a moment and said, “Are you saying that if I were dead, you’d take care of my little girl, feed her, and she could live and have clothing and a home?”
The official replied, “Well, yes, that’s the rule.”
Then the father reached down and pulled his daughter’s thin little body up to himself and hugged her hard and kissed her. Then he put her hand in the hand of the hand of the man at the desk and told him, “I’ll arrange that,” and then he walked out of the room and took his own life.
Often, we put “rules” and “restrictions” on God’s love that we bestow upon others, according to our own preferences. But fortunately for us, God does not do the same. As Jesus tells us: “For everyone that asks, receives; everyone that seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door shall be opened. “ (Matt 7:8).
Thanks to Mark Adams for sharing this.
One hundred years have gone by since this particular scene happened, but I see it happening again and again today. So many parents in Third World countries are like the man in the story. All they want is for their child to survive. They will do anything to just have their child survive.
Women in Haiti have held out their babies to me so I would take them back to the States with me. They love their baby so much that they would give their child to me so it would at least survive.
Is the best that we, who say we are a civilized society, can say is, “Sorry, tough luck! We have ‘rules’ and ‘regulations’ we must follow for good reasons. It’s too bad that your child will die.”
God did not set up the political, social and economic systems we choose to live under today. What gives us the idea that God did? When it is up to God, God sees that father and his child in a completely different way. God always responds with compassion and love. When YOU deny compassion and love, YOU deny God.
POLITICS COME FROM MAN AND FROM MAN ALONE. MERCY, COMPASSION AND JUSTICE COME FROM GOD!
What would be going on in YOUR mind and heart if YOU were the father in the story or the mother offering me her baby in Haiti?
YOU MAY CALL GOD LOVE. YOU MAY CALL GOOD GOODNESS. BUT THE BEST NAME FOR GOD IS COMPASSION!
