There’s a family with five children who all come to the tuition program that we work with. Four of the five kids are crippled to varying degrees. The two crippled girls can both walk, although their legs are mangled and the two boys both have to be carried from place to place, but scoot pretty well around a room. We go by the boys house every single day and ask if they’re coming to tuition. If they are, we usually pick them up and take them with us. The youngest boy, I’ll call him Madarsab, stopped coming to tuition a couple of weeks ago. He had called one of our contacts here some bad names in Hindi and the other children told him that we (our team) did not want him to come anymore.
Still, every single day, we stopped by and asked him if he was coming. He would say no and then hug on us and wave us along. I wanted so badly for him to come back. He can be quite the handful, as both boys have some serious anger issues, but he’s a truly sweet kid and I feel as if tuition may be the only safe place in his life. Last Wednesday, we decided to bring our contact so we would have a translator and we could really talk to him. He hid under a small table in his dark house as we tried to tell him how much we missed him and that we loved him and truly wanted him to come back. His mom desperately wanted him to come back too. He finally agreed that he would come back the next day, we hugged him underneath the table and went back to tuition. He then showed up! But started crying and screaming as soon as his mom put him down. Beks comforted him for awhile but to no avail. He went back home but then came back later, still crying but we held him and he stayed. He also came Thursday and Friday an everything seems to be back to normal, thankfully.
Through this whole process, i’m reminded of Jesus and how he won’t relent. He doesn’t ever give up on us. No matter how far away we get, how selfish we are, how broken we are. He loves us through it all. He doesn’t grow tired or weary. He doesn’t ever leave us or forsake us. He pursues us with an unconditional love that can be hard to understand. And he’s not content with just a piece of us. He wants our whole hearts, our whole lives. He won’t relent until he has it all. And that is an incredible reminder of how good our God is, how patient, how loving and just how unworthy we are of this unconditional, steadfast, jealous love. Sometimes I give him every reason in the world to peace out – I’m selfish, prideful, apathetic, you name it. But he not only never gives up, he pursues me. And that is exciting to me. And I hope that it always is.
I’ve been reading through books of the Bible like Hosea, Joel, Amos, etc where God talks about how angry he is with Israel and all the ways that they have disobeyed him even after he’s been so faithful to them. It’s amazing to read about all of these things that the Israelites did and compare them to my own shortcomings. It’s crazy to think that my sins are no different than theirs, and that I have a Savior who took my place and it’s by his wounds that I am healed. And because he cared enough to die for me, he won’t relent until he has it all. And I am unworthy, but so thankful.
“Come let us return to the Lord;
for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day, he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.
Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord;
his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth.”
– Hosea 6:1-3
