Looking Out The Window........

A bus stop. Probably still operational. It is made of plain gray slabs of cement. The cement is worn, chipping away. A green wooden bench sits sad and dilapidated in the center of the slabs. Trash, mounds of trash, litter the ground inside and around the bus stop. The noise of traffic is blaring. People are walking all around this dirty structure, along the streets and between the cars, hardly noticing.

Sitting in the back of a van, stopped in traffic, I look out of the window at this ramshackle site. My eyes scan from the top of the bus stop and suddenly my gaze fixes, unbelievably, on the ground of the bus stop. It takes a moment for me to process what I see, that it is real. On the ground, literally on the trash, sits a baby, probably six or seven months old. Just sitting, in the midst of old food containers, dirty papers, slimy bags. Next to her, also sitting on the ground, is a little girl, maybe six or seven years old. She is skinny. She is dirty. Her hair is a matted mess atop her head. She reaches into a bag on the bench. She takes out what looks like a medicine bottle. It holds water. Probably the little bit of clean water they have to drink, something they managed to scavenge. She poors capfuls of the water and feeds them to the baby.

I sit watching this, in disbelief, for about ten minutes, as we sit in traffic. I look around. I see no adults, no one is claiming these little ones. I wonder, are they alone? Have they sought shelter here for a while, before moving on to another trash-ridden destination? I look over at my own children, only 4 and 2 years old, and my eyes begin to swell with tears. I think of my own baby, who will be six months old before I know it. It is like I am picturing my own children in those conditions and my heart is breaking for these little girls.

It amazes me that I can be so touched by a scene like this, and in my own self-centered world, push it to the back of my mind just several hours later. By the time the girls went to bed this same evening, I was exhausted. Alan was working the evening, at a conference at church. I just wanted to go to bed, early. I put the girls to bed around 7:30pm and got ready for bed myself. I crawled under my sheets and started reading around 8pm, hoping to be asleep by 9 o'clock. But, for the next hour, I could hear Lydia, clicking her lights on and off, pattering around the floor of her room, knocking on her bedroom door. Finally, at 9 o'clock, I went into her room to try putting her to bed yet again. As soon as I walked through her bedroom door, I could hear music blaring and loud voices coming through her window.

They are building new apartments right behind ours. At night, when the workers are done, it often gets noisy. Many of the workers just stay the nights in the buildings they are constructing (yet another sad fact). They play loud music and often talk to one another loudly. As I tried to put Lydia back down to bed, I felt anger rising inside of me. My eyes teared up and I thought, 'How can I tell my little one it is night time and to go to sleep with all of this noise filtering into her room!?'

However, I put her to bed, and stomped back off to my room. I lay in bed, angry and crying about the noise in Lydia's room. I wondered if that was what had been keeping her up. When Alan came in, I immediately began venting to him about the situation. I went back to bed and lay there. It suddenly hit me that my attitude was really slipping. I decided (like it is an epiphany or something) to pray. As soon as I started praying, God flashed that scene at the bus stop into my head. I immediately started crying uncontrollably as I processed what I saw earlier that day.

After crying for what seemed forever, it dawned on me what my recent attitude had been. How dare I stomp around about noise in my house, when my little girls have beautiful princess beds, in beautiful bedrooms, where they fall asleep surrounded by dolls and stuffed animals! And of course, picturing those babies again in light of this, the water works went back on. I repented for my horribly selfish attitude, and for taking for granted all that my family and I have been blessed with.

Hebrews 12:11 says, "Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."

I have to say, this past week has been one of painful chastening. But, I know it will yield in me the righteousness of Christ. A righteousness that does not covet, does not complain, does not take for granted. A righteousness that praises, that stays contented, and that thanks the Lord for every blessing in life.