individual souls

This world in which we live is a lot to handle. There are hurting people every way we turn.

I have seen them, held them.. children with no parents. orphans.

I have touched them, fed them.. families with empty bellies and empty fridges. hungry.

I have heard them, listened to them.. people in physical pain. hurting.

I have rocked them, held their hand.. the broken hearted. broken.

I have seen them, known them, wept with them, loved them.. those whos only hope is Jesus.

It is not easy, to see what we see, to know what we know, to feel the hurt of the world closing in on us from all sides. It is a daily battle [that I sometimes lose] for me not to become calloused and hardened and indifferent to the worries of the world. It's easy for me to lump everyone into a category.. orphans, homeless, poor, lost. And when people are in a category with a label, I don't find their situations nearly as infuriating. When people are grouped by their situation, the situation becomes my focus instead of the people who are caught in it. Dangerous.

I have to make a conscious effort.. I think we all do, to break it down. To single out a face with a name and maybe a freckle or two and take them out of their category and see them as an individual. Labels and categories do nothing to my heart.. faces with names weigh heavy.

The world is not made up of a huge heap of hurt, it is filled with individual people with individual hearts that all hurt in different ways and at different times but break equally as painfully and need Christ equally as much.

God, teach us all what it means to love the people around us as individual souls rather than just as the human race.