Over the small number of years I have been around, I have come to realize that it’s quite rare for people to have a positive impact on someone’s life, but when they do the impact is immeasurable. More so if that impact is also Godly influenced.
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
-Isaac Newton
This is what can be said of my sponsors, a married couple, who decided to take a chance on me.
Their decision made it possible for me to know what it feels like to wear your first pair of shoes, to hold your first pencil, to enjoy three meals a day–something unheard of in the slums–a chance to have medical care and not die from malaria like many of the children in the slum do, a chance to go to school and not be part of a gang or a victim of HIV/AIDS, and the greatest gift of all: a chance to hear the word of God, which gave me the chance to have a personal relationship with Christ.
Wikipedia defines a sponsor as a contributor, a financial provider, which in a way is true because of the amount of money the sponsor contributes monthly. But to me the sponsor is more than that; he or she is a bridge between hunger and strength, between thirst and renewal, between fear and knowledge, between desperation and hope.
Through the letters shared between the sponsor and the child, hope is not only stirred, but relationships are built, wounds healed and love blossoms. These and so many other things start a chain reaction not only in the child’s life but also in the lives of those around him or her, and impact is felt to generations. The bonds created can never be broken, and in doing so the world is changed by changing the life of one child at a time. We can learn a lot from the sponsor:
- It’s in taking a chance, or should I say a risk, on someone that the real change begins, and we allow God not only to change that person but also to change other people’s lives.
- It’s good to be vulnerable. It’s important to let other people into our lives and into our hearts. It’s important to love.
- God is not looking at what we don’t have–He is looking at what is in our hands, little or big, and when we surrender it to Him, He uses it to “feed 5,000 people.”
It’s no wonder that I, too, decided to become a sponsor. How ironic that a child who was once sponsored is now sponsoring you might say, but I am a product of just that. I wanted to give that chance to someone else in the same way because my sponsor gave me that chance.
Its no wonder that each night I ask God to send more sponsors into this world, more sponsors like you and me. And if you are not one, then this is your chance to become one. God bless the sponsor.