Perfectly Said

This was posted on one of my fellow adoptive moms blog. When I read this post I felt like is described so perfectly how I felt after returning home from Ethiopia, and still feel today. The mother who could not feed her baby haunts me as well. We as christians are called to do more.
The Hole in Me
I have had such a heavy heart lately. It has been weighing on me and picking at me. I just feel such a burden for the world. This big broken world.
Honestly, I don't know who, if anyone, reads this blog. I suspect there are many "lurkers" That's fine, I do that, too, but like I said I don't know who is out there. So I imagine there is a large spectrum ranging from "believers" to "not-so-much". That said, I share my heart not knowing my audience, simply hoping someone will hear.
I've been reading THIS book, for the second time, actually. It rocks me to my core and lays bare all the things that are wrong with my way of life. And I have come to view the world quite differently because of it. And I just want to DO something, anything, to change this broken world. Now, you may say, "wait, they have done so much already" but let me be clear here. We don't see it that way. To those that tell us how wonderful we are or what a great or honorable thing we have done, we disagree. We have only done what the Lord REQUIRES of us and not one thing more. In fact, we began our journey of adoption for our own selfish desires and not because we truly understood the scriptures. But they began to speak to us and we began to understand.
Religion that God the 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. James 1:27
So every day I look at the clothes in my closet (which are falling off the shelves and crammed together so closely that not one more hanger will fit), I look at the flat screen TV, the food in the refrigerators (yes, we have two for all of our food), I look at the cars in our garage, and on and on and I see how BLESSED we are and that we have so much. Then I remember the woman that I saw on the street in Addis Ababa. She was so thin that every bone in her body was sticking out, her teeth protruded from her sunken face, her eyes were hollow and pleading. And she carried a child. He was as thin as she, his expression blank. They both wore dirty, stinking rags. Her shirt didn't even cover her chest and as she begged for something, anything, to feed her child, he tried in vain to nurse from her completely empty body. She follows me to the grocery store, to Target, to the coffee shop. She haunts me, and she is just one of millions of desperate people around the world. She is one of millions of desperate people that I don't help.
Yes, we have started doing something, but is it enough? The Bible is very clear about God's heart for the orphans and widows. God's word really leaves no option about helping, providing, sharing our worldly goods with them. After all, all that we have been given comes from God. He even goes so far as to say that this will be the final decision-making qualification that He looks at on Judgement Day (read it here). Did you help those less fortunate? Did you do EVERYTHING I told you to do?
Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say? Luke 6:46
I don't know what the answer will be, which is what is gnawing at me. And I don't want what I have done to become a crutch that carries me through this life, thinking that I have somehow gained a "golden ticket" into Heaven. I want to do everything that is asked of me. I don't want to be a goat. I just want to be a sheep.