Something Beautiful

In the words of Coldplay:

"Your skin,

Oh yeah your skin and bones,

Turn into 

Something beautiful,

You know,

You know I love you so."

This was the song going through my head today as I drove home from Ibadan's Motherless Children's Home. This was the first time in over a month that we had gone to visit our babies. There were new faces, and some faces missing. One of the older ones that we loved so much, Ireti, was sent to a home for older children. One of the sweet toddlers(or potty scooters, as I always call them), Keyende, went back to live with her father.

Some are orphaned, some have fathers that cannot take care of them at home, but all are in need of love.

After my initial welcoming to each of the kids in the room, my attention was diverted to the mattress where the youngest infants are placed. Where were Tywo and Keyende, the twins? After getting scared that something had happened to them, I realized that the healthy little infants smiling up at us were the same babies that we first saw as tiny premature infants 3 months ago, when we first visited the place. They had grown so much!

We also found some unfamiliar faces with around 5 new infants. The youngest two were some of the tiniest babies that I'd ever seen. In the states, these babies would have still been in the NICU, but not here. I was told that one was 2 weeks old and the other 3 1/2 weeks old. There was no baby fat on either of them. They were so tiny and you could feel every bone beneath the tissue thin skin. Almost at once, but woke up and were hungry. The one nursery worker who was in the room with us was preoccupied with her telenova to even hear their faint whimpers, which were the only sounds they could seem to get out.

My roommate, Sam, brought one of them to the woman and asked how often they get fed and whether we could give them something to eat. Thankfully, she went to get to food.

Feedings go like this, there is a bottle, and the cap for the bottle, but no nipple. The formula is poured into the cap, and then poured down the babies throats. There is no sucking, but at this point, we didn't mind. Sam and I fed them until they were full and sleepy.

Going home we talked about how they represented such a picture of Christ for our lives. God looked down on us in our infant state. We were starving and helpless, like an infant, but He came and saw us as something that was precious and beautiful. Just as I looked at these babies, with so much love, Jesus looked at each one of us, with so much more that my finite love. Spiritually, I was like these babies.  Nothing but a little skin covering my bones, I was hungry and He fed me. In His unfathomable love, He took my from my helpless state and whispered in my ear, "You know, I love you so!"