Pure and Undefiled

Tonight I lost a piece of my heart. It’s somewhere in the mountains of Cayes, Haiti in a small, two-story cinderblock orphanage nested into the base of a hill.

I’m not sure how many of you have ever been to an orphanage, but for me, last night was the first. I think we tend to get a picture of what we imagine something to be like in our heads beforehand, which is perhaps why it rocks our world when we see it for real.

As the sun was setting behind one of Haiti’s majestic mountain ranges, the team was greeted with the sound of singing floating on a breeze up the hill to the Cambry mission house. Under the cover of darkness, we walked the short way down to the orphanage where we found ourselves being hugged on and clung to by so many orphans.

Pastor Mike led us all inside to a small concrete room where a few benches lined the walls. And by the light of two oil lamps, we spent the next half hour singing His praises with His precious children.

I’m not exactly sure when, but somewhere between the words of “I’ve got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy” and “Jesus Loves Me,” I just lost it. There in the middle of a Haitian orphanage, tears streaming down my face, our voices blending with theirs through the refrains of “Papa, m’adore ou” (“Father, I adore You” – also known as the only song we know in Creole), I was reminded and encouraged by the words James 1:27, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

So this is what ‘pure and faultless’ looks like. Little, dark-eyed children holding our hands, arms wrapped around our waists, sitting in our laps, dancing and clapping, and falling asleep, their heads resting against our legs. I had to smile as it hit me that while the precious children surrounding us may be orphans to this world, they have a Dad. A very real Dad who loves them and they love so very much.

And so, with tear-stained cheeks and promises of tomorrow, we made our way back up to the guest house where we concluded our day with a devotion about ‘people who make a difference’... to the sound of a hundred hopeful voices praising the One who has made a difference for me.