Walk Beside Them

This is a post I have had half-written since June when I delivered it as the devotional at Royal Family Kids' Camp. Last Thursday, it wrote the rest of itself. :)

August has been a tough month for me. I feel like I started it on a major high and, as major highs typically do, it became a major low. Two weeks ago today, I just wanted so desperately to give in to a major breakdown in morning worship. I told myself that if one person went to the altar or if he paused the service for one second, I would go running. It didn't happen. And I left there feeling like I was just so parched and dry... picturing a field of soil cracked from lack of rain. I wanted an outpouring of rain that morning during church. I realized that I was all poured out and needed to be refilled in order to have enough to give this school year. But I didn't get that moment of breakthrough, that moment of refilling, that emotional earthquake that sometimes we in Pentecostal circles think is the only way (or at least the preferable way) to go.

What I got instead was two weeks of "normal". I woke up Monday morning and felt more like myself again. I didn't come home from school that week and collapse onto my bed, wishing I could just give up on everything and stay there. I didn't ache inside from that emptiness I had been feeling. I didn't get the monsoon I wanted, but I did get a sweet outpouring out of His vessel of blessing, just a trickle, almost indistinguishable. And it has been exactly what I needed.

On Thursday, though, I started to feel overwhelmed. I checked my twitter feed only to find more terrible news from Egypt, a rapidly deteriorating refugee situation in Syria (to Iraq and Jordan) with now 1 million children who are Syrian refugees, and another case of senseless violence in the shape of the beating death of a WWII veteran which joined the murder of the Australian student baseball player. I know that it seems like a logical answer here would be "Get off twitter. Stay away from the news." However, I typically don't see that as an answer. I believe, at my core, that it's our responsibility to be aware of the happenings in the world around us. And some days, I am torn between a desire to stick my head in the sand and a responsibility to open my eyes. Thursday was one of those days and I just felt so burdened and overwhelmed for our world. What can we do, anyway? How can I help Syrian refugees? The world is too big and the problems too immense for me to have an impact. I feel like a hypocrite even saying that, because I teach the exact opposite, but I need to admit that I struggle with those feelings all the time. 

Kids need to be sponsored, families transitioning from homelessness to housing need furniture, under-privileged schools need supplies, foster kids need a permanent home, terminal illnesses need cures, students crying over issues so much bigger than any I have ever faced need support, people dying all around need life. And I can't do it all. In fact, some days I feel like I can't do any of it. 

And then I remembered this Word God gave me this summer for Royal Family. And I think it still applies. 

"Walk beside them."

Janusz Korczak was a pediatrician, educator, and author who eventually ran an orphanage in Poland. There were 192 orphans in his Warsaw orphanage in the early 1940's. Korczak was an educated man who was very aware of the situation around him. Several times, he was offered an opportunity to escape, to be delivered from the plight that was sure to come to his children. Korczak chose to stay. He knew that the walk he would inevitably take would lead to his own death but his answer to that summons was that his own life didn't matter, that his presence with the children of his orphanage mattered more. So...

He walked beside them.

Korczak couldn't change the circumstances of Warsaw, Poland, in 1942. He couldn't save the lives of the children or stop the Nazis. He couldn't change the world, but he could stay and walk beside them.

So on August 5, 1942, Janusz Korczak walked with 192 orphans and orphanage staff to the train, destination Treblinka death camp, where they were all murdered.

Below is an eye witness account of his final act of sacrifice.

"By then he was already very ill, and yet he walked straight as a ramrod with his face like a mask, seemingly under control. He walked at the head of that tragic procession, carrying the youngest child in one arm and leading a second young one by the hand. The children were dressed in their holiday best. They wore blue denim uniforms. The whole cortege advanced four by four, buoyantly, rhythmically and with dignity to Umschlagsplatz- to the square of death!"

~Irena Sendlerowa

Ephesians 5:2 tells us to "walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God". Some days, we are called to act, to make grand gestures and participate in things larger than ourselves and change the world around us. But some days? Some days the best we can offer (and exactly what is needed) is just to walk beside them. To be aware and bear witness and hold the hand of the defenseless, to walk in the way of love is the our sacrifice to God. Because sacrifice doesn't always involve changing circumstances in order to save lives or change the world... sometimes the sacrifice is in the pain of knowing. It hurts to walk beside someone because, in doing so, you are putting yourself in the midst of the pain and danger. But your presence--your awareness-- is the best you can offer some days.

So just walk beside them.