Let your heart be broken...

In my not-so-vast teaching experience (time-wise), I have still had a rather vast experience culturally. I randomly taught 2 weeks in a Filipino Christian school when I was still in college. I taught 3 weeks in inner-city Philadelphia for practicum. I taught 7 weeks in a missionary kid school in the Philippines. I taught 6 weeks in a middle-class suburban public school in Pennsylvania. I taught 3 months in a correspondence school for 6 children of hospital staff in the middle of nowhere in Zimbabwe. The majority of the kids that I teach now come from families with more money than most people I've met. Talk about a wide spectrum of kids!

I just went through some of my posts from Urban Seminar and Student Teaching. When I did Urban Seminar, I taught 4th graders who had seen drive-by shootings or who had lost relatives due to gang wars. Some of them were immigrant kids. Most of them lived in broken homes. Most of them came from poor families. I also did a one week practicum in a public school near college and some of the kids in the ESL class were refugees from Liberia who had seen more death and violence in their 9-year-old-life than most people in America have ever seen live. I tutored in the innercity and dealt with a violent 8-year-old who told me he would cut my leg off, and from the tone of his voice, he could have been an 18-year-old and had he had a saw on him, he probably would have cut my leg off.

Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken hearted
Ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see


When I taught in the MK school, I had a boy who came from a missionary family, but his life was pretty chaotic. He had so many emotional needs. He could come to school one day and be happy and cheerful and funny and then he could come to school the very next day sullen, violent, and uncooperative. I fell in love with that child. He responded so well to love. 


When I was in Africa, I held the hands of HIV positive orphans. I spent afternoons with a woman who was the second wife of some guy. She worked her fingers to the bone and still came to cook for the kids of HIV positive orphans and show them attention and love that they needed. I taught beautiful little children who didn't have a lot in life. 


I wanted to teach in a school where kids came from a less-wealthy background. I guess I just always thought that would be the best place to live out "teaching ministry" to the fullest. God had other plans. I got hired in a school made up of kids who have never faced starvation or any physical need. My kids talk about their iPads, cruises, and ski trips in Colorado. My kids bring imported Goldfish to school for snacks. I started the year with the kind of, "Oh brother... what am I doing here with kids that come from another world that I can't even relate to!" 

Let your heart be broken for a world in need

Feed the mouths that hunger,

soothe the wounds that bleed.

Give the cup of water, and the loaf of bread.

Be the hands of Jesus, serving in his stead.

Here on earth applying principles of love.

Visible expression, God still rules above.

Living illustration of the living word,

to the minds of all who've never seen or heard.

Blest to be a blessing, privileged to care,

challenged be the need, apparent everywhere.

Where mankind is wanting, fill the vacant place.

Be the means through which

The Lord reveals His grace.

Add to your believing deeds that prove it true,

knowing Christ as Savior, Make Him Master too.

Follow in His footsteps, go where he has trod;

In the worlds great trouble risk yourself for God.

Let your heart be tender and your vision clear;

See mankind as God sees, serve Him far and near.

Let your heart be broken by a brothers pain;

Share your rich resources, give and give again.

I love that hymn. I always applied that hymn to situations like the inner-city or Africa. My kids don't have wounds that bleed. My kids don't have hungry mouths. (They are well-fed and it's obvious!) But I've come to realize that my heart needs to be broken for their needs. The hands and feet of Jesus take a different form in this school, but I still can be the hands and feet of Jesus. I have kids who have internal wounds that bleed just as much as a physical wound. I have kids who are starving for true love and attention just as much as a hungry kid in Africa. I have kids who ask me questions like, "Will I go to Hell if I don't go to church because my parents don't go to church?" Their spiritual need is just as deep as the spiritual need of a kid in inner-city Philadelphia. I can still be a living illustration of the living word to these kids. I have also learned that contrary to what I thought, many come from non-Christian or nominally Christian backgrounds. 

Service to God does not always take the form that we might think it should take. Service to God is not optional and based on circumstances. It must be constant. Maybe we don't understand why God places us in certain situations, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that we are serving Him to our fullest, letting our hearts be broken for the lost around us, following Christ, and taking great risks for Him.