Pure Religion

I LOVE receiving snail mail! Who doesn't?! We check everyday to see if there is something in the mailboxes for us. Often there isn't, but when there is - it basically makes the rest of the day super incredible. (PS - for the record, this is not a ploy to get you to send us more mail :P)
But I received a letter from one of my dear dorm mates this past week and it was incredibly encouraging and moved me to tears. At the end was the following Bible verse:

"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." ~James 1:27

Whoa.

Paris is a big city. It's dirty and extremely busy. And full of homeless people and beggars. We see them everyday and get to know the faces of those that we pass on our regular routes. It really does break my heart and I can't do anything to help them except throw a few coins in their old coffee cups from time to time. One person, especially a poor university student, cannot reach the needs of the entire world, no matter how much we wish that we could. The girls here and I have had a few conversations about how we come up with every excuse in the book not to give when we see them and how we feel so useless here.

My very dear friend once said, "Do for one what you wish you could do for all." That was ground-breaking for me when I first heard it and is honestly keeping me afloat at times here when it seems like the need is so incredibly overwhelming. Pick a few people to help and go from there. It's not the quantity that matters, but the quality.

I see the same two people on the way back from classes everyday. It's a mother and her son with a sign that says, "J'ai faim." (I'm hungry.) I wonder what that little boy thinks of the world as he sits there with the saddest expression on his face. He's not in school, he's inside of a metro station day in and day out, and he has to watch as thousands of people pass him everyday and ignore him and his mom. I put some coins in their jar on Friday as we went past them. The mother was so incredibly thankful! I wish that there wasn't the language barrier so I would feel a tad more comfortable talking with her. Legit - why do we make excuses like that?! I kick myself for it.

I walked the entire length of Champs-Elysées (a super busy street in Paris) yesterday and as I walked, I saw a small garden with benches off to the side. It looked more quiet than most of the gardens in Paris (as everything is crazy busy all the time). I wanted to get home as I had been out walking for hours already, but God told me that I wouldn't regret it. Going on a detour, I found a little patch of grass and a little cluster of bushes and trees. I sat on the bottom branch of one of the trees, just off the ground, and found myself, for the first time in 2 months, completely hidden from people's view in the middle of God's creation. Wow. Those are priceless moments.
As I began to pray, I was reminded of that mother and child. God put it in my heart that those are the few that I can help while I'm here. Can I just play a game with the son for a bit? Can I teach him to read if he doesn't have any education? Can I get them a Bible and just encourage that mother? Being in French, yea, it will be insanely difficult, but it was also insanely difficult for God to watch his only Son die on a cross for a rebellious people.

So pure religion. It's more than just "Read your Bible, pray everyday and you'll grow, grow, grow" like that old song tells us. If you're not growing into a tree with deep roots that are producing a harvest of 100, 60, 30 times as much as has been planted (Matthew 11), then what's the point? What, then, are you living for? Life's not about staying in your comfort zone. Ouch, hallelujah.

Who are the few that you can help?