Hiding our messes

"Beth!"

I turned and saw little James scooting towards me as quickly as he could across the grass, the biggest of grins across his face.  James, affectionately called Jim-o by everyone here, is a little boy who was born a few years ago to a mentally disabled teenager.  She was rescued from a bad living situation, along with James and his sister Jemimah, and now they live at the Tania Centre.  The mother was in the special needs class last year, and helps in the kitchen this year.  Jemimah is the most cheerful of toddlers, and I've never seen her with anything less than an absolutely beaming smile on her face.  You would never know what situation she came from by looking at her or interacting with her.

James, however, was born with some severe physical disabilities.  He is unable to walk on his own, so he scoots along the ground using his arms and legs.  He can walk for a few yards with assistance, but is incredibly wobbly.  Any physical exertion, even talking for too long, leaves him wheezing and gasping for breath.  A speech impediment makes talking even more difficult on top of the shortness of breath, making communication difficult for him at times.  Anything beyond just sitting requires so much more effort for James than it does for other children.

Some of the children here with disabilities try to hide their disabilities out of embarrassment.  Students with speech issues are quiet, students with unusable hands hide them under the desk during class.  But James doesn't let his disabilities keep him from being himself.  He has learned to propel himself across the ground almost as quickly as I can walk, and his speech impediment doesn't keep him from playing the "Beth!" "Jim-o!" game with me anytime I'm within shouting distance.  (He shouts "Beth!" at me, and I shout "Jim-o!" back at him, eliciting an enormous grin.  We go back and forth for quite some time, usually until I can't stand it anymore.  It's a very popular game here, with variations like the "Beth!" "Kanje!" game, the "Beth!" "Ndulu!" game, and the "Beth!" "Jemimah!" game.) 

James was so excited to see me when I walked past the dorm that he dropped what he was doing so he could scoot over to me just as quickly as he could, shouting as loudly as his breath allowed.  It didn't matter to him that I was already carrying one child and had three others hanging onto my arms, walking and talking with me without effort.  What mattered was that his Beth was here, and even if he had to scoot the entire length of the soccer field, he was going to come spend time with me.  He didn't need to have working legs or enough breath to carry on a conversation, he just needed to get close enough to be noticed.

If only we could come to Jesus with such abandonment of self.  Maybe our spiritual legs aren't working right now, and maybe we've lost the words to say.   Maybe we're embarrassed by how far behind other Christians we think we are, so we sit quietly beside the path as Jesus walks past.  We care more about how we look than about being with the One we love.

But Jesus wants us right now, no matter where we are in life.  When he told the parable of the prodigal son, the father didn't wait for the son to get his life together before welcoming him home.  He ran out to meet his son as soon as he saw him coming, probably still smelling of the pig sty he'd been working at, and embraced him as if no wrong had been done.  He didn't ask the son if he'd had a change of heart or if he was just flat broke (and, if you read the story, it wasn't a change of heart, it WAS that he was flat broke and out of options), and he didn't demand repayment or repentance.  He welcomed his son in that messy, smelly, broken state.

May we all come to fall so in love with Jesus that the need to be near him is so much greater than the need to hide all of our messes.  Even if it means we have to scoot along the ground to him, gasping his name.