Silent Substitute

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
I had been to China twice. I knew what sights and smells and sounds to expect. But what I didn’t expect was to see such beautiful hearts of selflessness and servanthood in the orphans I would meet. I wasn’t prepared for the power of seeing love lived out in actions and in truth.

The first week of camp, my buddies were two teenage orphan girls. They didn’t come to camp with a goal of making sure they got to swim, eat ice cream, and make bracelets. Their goal there was to serve me. Jane and Nana went out of their way to make sure I had a place to sit, or a bowl of soup to eat.

We spoke two very different languages. And yet they communicated so much through their actions and in their smiles.

I hadn’t done anything to deserve their love. But they accepted me as a friend without reservation. The whole concept seemed a little upside down to me. Wasn’t I supposed to be there serving them?

But they were the ones that had it right-side up. “The greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves” (Luke 22:26).

During our second week of camp, most of the campers had physical or mental disabilities. My buddy was a four year old boy whose only “handicap” was a repaired cleft lip. How heartbreaking to think that this was likely the only reason he was abandoned.

I was privileged to watch the other volunteers as they interacted with their disabled buddies. Throughout the week, I saw this verse come to life through the people at camp:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant (Philippians 2:3-7).

Whether it was feeding, changing, cleaning up accidents, or even being painted head to toe with face paint, they loved in actions and in truth. They loved the ones that many would consider the outcast and the least – and they treated them as the greatest.

“Then he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For he who is least among you all—he is the greatest’” (Luke 9:48).

I saw children welcomed in Jesus’ name. I saw the beautiful hearts of “the least.” And these are the pictures that will stay with me forever.

So what did I learn in all of this? I realized that it doesn’t really do any good to sit around and think about what I should do for the Kingdom of Heaven. All I have is right now. And I am going to do something.

“By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:16-19).

-Meghan