I want to share with you a letter that I received from Junior, a child that I am sponsoring through Compassion International. Junior is 7 years old and is from Honduras. Compassion is an organization set-up for individuals to “sponsor” children living in poverty in other countries. The sponsorship enables these children to receive food, medication, an education, and an opportunity to learn about the love of Christ.
“Dear Sponsor Kirby Martens, I greet you with affection hoping that you are in good health along with the ones around you. Thank you for sponsoring me and I thank God for this means of communication with you. I want to tell you that I’m doing well in school, I can read and write and my classmates are very nice to me. I like going to school. I want to tell you that I have a parrot and she calls me Junior every morning when she is hungry. I also had cute puppies from my dog Blaki but they all died, she had 13 puppies, but they all died during the earthquake here in Honduras. I want to tell you that I had so much fun playing on Easter week, it was so much fun for me. I also had vacation in June and the sister took us to the field and we practiced volleyball, soccer and basketball and I had so much fun. I would like to know if you have children so they can be my friends like you. I received your letter and I was very happy to learn a little more about you. I want to ask you to pray for my family and my country. I say goodbye with many kisses and hugs and I hope we keep in touch.”
I share this letter with the hopes that we will all become more aware of the need to share the love of Christ with the world. I fear that sometimes, as a church, we get so inward focused that we don’t pay any attention to what is going on outside of our church walls. Christ commands us to “go and make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19). Are we truly doing that? Making disciples of all nations starts in our own community and spreads to every country of the world. Are we focusing our attention and efforts on spreading the Gospel to every corner of the earth? Are we even going out into our community to spread Christ’s love? Or are we so focused on our church building, our worship service, and our Sunday school class that we have completely neglected Christ’s words. The Great Commission doesn’t state to sit in our church building and wait for non-Christians to come to us so we can make them into disciples. It says to GO!
