Frustration mounts as I open my car door and step into a large puddle that covers my shoes. The wind blows my umbrella inside out and I grit my teeth to keep my tongue from sin.
I can’t believe how much rain has fallen! The freezing wind bites, the cold rain soaks my clothes, and I am so over it! Weathermen may rejoice in breaking precipitation records, but I do not!
I turn the key in the security door, hit one button for light and another for warmth, change into slippers, and sort through the mail. I’m excited to see I have a letter from one of my sponsored kids.
I open it and see the familiar white and green paper that indicates it’s from Ethiopia, and I can almost quote what is written without reading a word. There’s the standard greeting, he’s fine, am I well, he’s being going to church, please pray for his studies, and please pray for rain for the crops.
I toss the letter on the couch and move on with my day. I’ve read it all before, and as a city girl the request for rain means little to me. I figure that maybe it’s just a sentence the teacher wrote on the blackboard and once again it’s been copied. A generic, meaningless, space filler.
I pray for this boy but forget about the rain for the crops, because surely the requests I can think of are more important than rain.
Sunday comes and the rain still falls. At church a sponsor targets me to ask what the ministry is doing about the drought and famine in Ethiopia and Kenya. I shrug and say I’m not in Marketing, but I’m sure we are there helping already.
Try as I might the Holy Spirit doesn’t allow me to shrug this off. So I Google Ethiopia and famine and read news article after news article about the years of drought and current famine invading Africa with its friends starvation and death.
I go to work to hear from the CEO that we are there helping, and I’m proud that we are in the middle of this crisis — but I’m ashamed of myself.
I may be a city girl and I may never grow a vegetable in my life, but this does not excuse me of pride that ignores my sponsored son’s request for prayer support for something so important in his life, in his country, in his family’s survival. May God forgive me of my arrogance.
Learn from my lesson. Always pray for the requests your sponsored children and students send you. Especially when they don’t make sense. Especially when you think you know better. Especially because they ask.