i vow to love...

I am often asked why I do what I do and when I decided to start doing it.  I’ve struggled with answering those questions because I never really had an “aha!” moment…my heart has been broken for so long that I don’t remember when it first happened but I do remember running across this photograph and story when I was really young. And to say I was broken, would be an understatement…this photograph led to “a wail that swallowed me.”

I remember being so hurt and moved with compassion to run and scoop this tiny frail girl up, hold her close, and find a way to nurse her back to life.  I remember knowing then that I was meant for greater things outside of my small town that I grew up in.  I remember wanting to put on war paint and go marching out to war against the injustices of the world.  I remember fighting back the urge to go on a mad manhunt to find people committing any kind of injustice and make them pay.  I remember crying myself to sleep at night thinking about how unfair life is.  I remember standing up against my parents and refusing to eat just for the sake of starving children.  I remember falling in love with the faces of children I had never even met.  And then I heard the story behind the photograph…

Kevin Carter, a South African photojournalist, had taken the photograph while in Sudan.  While photographing, the vulture hovering over the dying child flew away.  Carter also left the scene, leaving the emaciated girl who was moments away from death lying facedown in the dirt.  Afterwards, the photo appeared in The New York Times and Carter received the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography.  Merely 3 months after taking the photo, Carter committed suicide, leaving behind this letter: 

"I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."

And that is when all hell broke loose within me…how in the world could someone who is within 10 feet of this tiny precious girl just leave her for the vultures to devour???? I was enraged, infuriated, pissed off beyond control!!!

One man, saw a dying child in need, had the chance to change the outcome, had the chance to be the hands and feet of Christ, and chose to do nothing…

Hmmm…stop. breathe. think. Well then, how different are we from Kevin Carter? Not a bit.  Because we've done the same heinous thing when we have the opportunity to share God’s love and instead, we walk away for fear of getting our hands a little dirty.  We turn our back on a dying world that’s destined for hell every single time we pass up the chance to love.  So I don’t have a right to be angry at Kevin Carter at all, because at some point in time, I’ve been (and still am, somedays) just like him…and if all of you are honest with yourself, so are you. 

So when does it stop? When do we quit ignoring injustice? When do we start loving like God loves? When do our hearts start breaking for the things that make His heart break? The answer: when you decide to do something, when you decide to not be like Kevin Carter, when you decide to seek God's heart with everything you have and all that you are....when our hearts are aligned with God's heart, that's when it stops...