GRATEFUL HEARTS
Their sparkling eyes and ivory-white smiles sharply contrasted their austere surroundings. Dirt floors, corrugated metal classrooms and wall-to-wall bunk beds characterized these children’s daily lives. Yet in the midst of extreme poverty, they taught our group the meaning of true wealth.
Earlier this week a team of us from Crossing the Jordan were serving in Motherly Care Children’s Home in Nairobi, Kenya. Along with an amazing staff, 110 orphans live on a cramped compound, cooking their own food and washing their clothes over a wood fire. Imagine such difficult physical conditions, with no parents to relieve their hardships. We might expect them to fill the air with whining, complaining, and fussing. Quite the opposite. Their lives exude joy. Amazing joy, bubbling up from grateful little hearts. At one point, we showed them a video of an American child throwing a fit. They stared at it confused, and asked, “What’s he doing?” They’d never seen a kid throw a fit!
Each of us on the team walked away with the stark reality that we don’t need a lot of “stuff” to experience a joy-filled life. We simply need to be grateful for what God gives us, whether a little or a lot. When we live in a space of entitlement, we set ourselves up for misery. But possessing a grateful heart, opens our world to joy. In Philippians 4:12 Paul wrote, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.” He penned those words from a prison cell.
Material wealth certainly ranks as a blessing from God (Proverbs 10:22). But it has absolutely nothing to do with our state of joy. If you doubt that, just look in the faces of 110 orphans in Nairobi, Kenya, a few of them depicted in the photo above.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how grateful am I for the simple blessings of life? How can I increase my “gratitude meter?"
Lord, fill my heart with a sense of gratitude; not only during “good times,” but during hardships as well.