I was talking online this morning with a friend about journaling the scriptures, wondering if everyone tends toward seeing the same types of verses jump out over and over.  As if there’s a certain lens through which you view the Bible, passing over some passages, but having others leap off the pages and grab you around the throat.  I always see the parts about justice, mercy, the poor, the oppressed, and the call to defend the cause of those victims of injustice and oppression.  Some of that is my personality, built upon by training in social work, built upon by working the the elderly and lonely and sick, built upon by traveling to poorer nations and having my eyes opened to certain global truths.

Tonight at church, we sang a song called “Marvelous Light”, and it spoke to me about the orphans I’ll revisit in about 4 weeks:

I once was fatherless, a stranger with no hope.
Your kindness wakened me, wakened me from my sleep.
Your love, it beckons deeply, a call to come and die.
By grace now I will come and take this life, take Your life.
Sin has lost its power, death has lost its sting.
From the grave You’ve risen victoriously!
Into marvelous light I’m running Out of darkness, out of shame
By the cross, You are the truth, You are the life, You are the way!

The fatherless have faces in my mind now, and the work God has called me to brings kindness, awakening, and a journey toward the light that God sheds on a world full of darkness.  I’m thankful that God allows me to be a participant in his work with orphans, bringing love and hope to a dark place, and I’m glad for his words in song today, which remind me of the depth of meaning and purpose that he has for that work.