Overwhelmed

As I sit here this afternoon after spending some time in the word and in prayer, I feel so overwhelmed. Honestly, I've prayed about some things going on in our own family that are genuine concerns/needs and while those things have a tendancy to overwhelm me, I give them back to Father with a trust that He will continue to meet our needs.

I sit here overwhelmed about how much I am at a lack for words at the hurt and atrocities that are taking place in this world. This past weekend was orphan Sunday at our church, and this continues to be more and more of a theme in the hearts of Ken and I. I don't know what this looks like, I don't know why God has pricked our hearts the way that He has with this but I find myself with such a brokenness and a helplessness as I listen to the news about a volcano in Indonesia that has left such a devastation in it's path, families who have suffered great, great loss and I sit here in my cushy little chair in my apartment in Olathe and my heart longs to reach out to them in their hurt.

A team from my church just recently went on a missions trip to Chennai, India to serve alongside another team there. I remember reading the blog (http://www.bruceandpattybauman.blogspot.com/) and looking at the powerful pictures of this team going into slums, leper colonies, and orphanages and longing to be there with them to hug on these children and love on the moms and dads who meet each day with a struggle of simple survival. I pray that hopefully sometime in the next year Father will provide a way for me to be able to go serve on one of these missions trips. In the meantime, I know that He has demonstrated to me the power of prayer, and I continue to cry out to God on the behalf of the millions of orphans and widows that I have never met. Father meet them with your love. In only the way that you can, wrap your mighty hands around them in a supernatural way. Let them experience the peace that only you can bring in the midst of their situation.

"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