Jesus and the sick children

A few months ago a community nurse in Malawi wrote Hannelore, the children’s ministries champion for our mission (SIM), asking for pictures of Jesus with African children.

“I work as a community nurse,” Helen wrote, “visiting the sick and handicapped in their homes...around Blantyr, Malawi.... About one quarter of my patients are children, some of them orphans, some are handicapped, and some are living with HIV. Just two weeks ago one of my children, a girl of 13, died from severe heart failure.” As well as monitoring the child physically, Helen and her colleagues had told her about Jesus, his desire to be her Saviour and to take her to heaven.

Helen was hoping to find a picture of Jesus with a sick child. She wrote, “I would like to be able to give a picture to each sick child, so that they have a visual reminder that Jesus cares for them.”

The letter was forwarded to me since she also asked for a book “about an African child who is suffering from AIDS.... if there is one.” I was able to refer her to Lindiwe’s List for books about HIV/AIDS for African children, but none of those books contained a picture of Jesus with a sick African child.

Hannelore informed me that there were some funds available. I have been an active member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators in South Africa, so I posted an invitation on their site. From the illustrators who applied, we chose Siobhan Blundell . Just because she lives in Africa doesn’t mean that Siobhan has first-hand contact with black African culture. It took some going back and forth for her to understand that we didn’t want an upper-class, suburban African home.

Helen had some specific ideas of what she wanted: a mat, not a bed; mosquito netting as an important part of fighting malaria. It wasn’t hard to make the child in the picture pass for either a boy or a girl since children of either gender often wear very short hair. We wanted a cross to be a reminder of how great Christ’s love is and what he has done to make it possible for the sick child to join him in heaven. Siobhan worked it beautifully into the window and surrounded it with the light of hope.

The picture is finally finished and will soon be available for workers all over Africa to download to use with children. We anticipate posters in clinics and small cards to send home with sick children as Helen originally dreamed. We may even print note cards as a fund raiser for supporting churches. But the most important part is that sick African children understand that they aren’t forgotten. Jesus, who healed the sick when he walked the earth, who shared their suffering when he died, who blessed the children; this Jesus wants to adopt them into his own forever family.

Christmas Crackers

“Merry Christmas,” my cheery sister-in-law greeted me over the phone from their long-awaited vacation in Hawaii.

“Yeah, right,” I groaned.

As fun goes, this Christmas ranks right up there with the one when I was eight. That was the year I emptied my stocking with its hoard of oranges, candy, new Crayola crayons, etc. onto the floor at my grandparents' house in Kokomo, Indiana and got an instant stomach ache — before I ate a thing! I spent the day in the high four-poster in the bedroom listening to the laughter from the living room where the extended family was having their annual exchange of goofy gifts. That might have been the year that someone gave a “do-it-yourself breakfast” — a cob of corn in a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box — or a pre-splattered tie you wouldn’t have to worry about spilling on at dinner. I remember lying in bed, glimpsing my great aunt through the living-room door as she modeled a wide-brimmed straw hat decorated with large yellow sunflowers. I felt left out and very sorry for myself. A couple soda crackers make a lousy Christmas dinner. No doubt the surgeon had fond thoughts of little LeAnne as he was called out Christmas evening to do an emergency appendectomy.

Soda crackers still make a lousy Christmas dinner. This year fourteen-month-old Bella came down with stomach flu a few days before Christmas. The vomiting only lasted about twelve hours but left her lethargic and without appetite for days afterward. Her mommy, Katie, was next. On Christmas Eve son-in-law Adam started vomiting although by evening he managed to sit with us while we sang carols and read Luke chapter two as we have every year since Katie’s first Christmas.

At two A.M. Christmas morning Erika started vomiting. At five I joined her. The most inconvenient moment was when Erika occupied the bathroom while my contracting stomach muscles pushed food in various stages of digestion in both directions. Steve ate Christmas dinner so he had a lot more to come up. By the time Katie and family left for her in-laws' the three of us who were left crawled into separate corners to sleep it off.

I am older now and more philosophical than at eight. I lay in bed and thanked God that I was sick that day instead of two days later when we were scheduled to fly to Indiana. (Vomiting and diarrhea are somewhat inconvenient on a plane, and my fellow passengers would probably not be sympathetic with my commitment to attend the family reunion.) I prayed off and on for a friend in the last stages of leukemia. While my nausea would soon pass, Chris would never again on this earth feel strong and energetic. (He has since received his new, healthy, heavenly body.) I could also be grateful for a mother-in-law with lots of experience and a daughter who graduated from Cordon Bleu Culinary School who took over from my sketchy dinner preparations.

Of course, Christmas is not about turkey dinners or brightly wrapped packages. It’s about God taking on flesh, living with our weakness and dying in our sin so that we might be freed from both. My life should celebrate the incarnation three-hundred-and-sixty-five days a year, not merely on December the twenty-fifth. Nevertheless, next year I would like to eat my turkey fresh and leave the soda crackers to crumble in turkey soup.