04.24.07 Stories And The Cure

We sat in the lobby of a Nashville hotel and traded stories this afternoon.  I told him about the unexpected benefits of my sponsoring children through Compassion International, like what it’s taught my children about the difference between want and need, how it’s revealed to them a world beyond the cul-de-sac.  He told me tales of children he’s met around the world and how he’s been changed by his thirty years working for Compassion, beginning in the field taking photos to be made into sponsorship packets like the ones we hand out at my concerts.

I asked him how many kids his family has sponsored and he began his answer by rattling off a long list of more than a dozen who have graduated from the program over the years.  He knew them all by name.  He knew where they lived and what they do for a living today.  I can only remember one of them he recalled for me.  “Mercedes is an architect specializing in housing for the poor”, he said like a proud father.

This is what Wess and I mean when we say Compassion International “works”.  It doesn’t just feed kids, dig wells, pave roads, build homes.  It transforms the entire person, who then has the opportunity to live the rest of their life transforming others in every way.

Wess went on to tell me about being in the Philippines speaking to a group.  He had a child stand on the stage with him to represent children in the Child Development Program and he had a college student stand with him to represent those in the Leadership Development Program but he needed a baby to represent the work Compassion does in early childhood, before children are old enough to enter a full-blown project.

He asked the crowd if he could hold someone’s baby as he explained what the early childhood program does for the littlest ones in the third world.  Someone handed him their child, and this baby quickly nuzzled into Wess’ chest and rested while he spoke.

When he finished speaking, the father took his baby back and told Wess that he and his wife were children raised by Compassion International.  Wess asked him, this formerly impoverished man, if his baby needed to be released from poverty.  He asked if this baby needed the help of Compassion International.  With a smile the father said, “No.”

Wess explained to me that he worked as a young man in Chicago’s worst neighborhoods.  He set up literacy programs and tended to the physical needs of the people living there.  He’s seen our government’s welfare programs and helped it’s recipients.  He knows welfare, he said.  He said that if you ask a welfare mother in Chicago, one he worked with all those years ago, if her children need government assistance today the answer will likely, but not always, be yes.  It doesn’t work like Compassion, he implied.

I asked why.  Because welfare deals with the symptoms of poverty, he explained.  Not being able to eat, to work, to pay the bills, are symptoms of true poverty which is hopelessness.  Believing you are nothing is the disease.  Believing you’ll always be nothing is the real illness.  Believing there is no God to love you, no hope, no better way of thinking and living - These are the real cancer that welfare does not address.

Compassion International cures poverty from the inside out, he said.  So it works.

We dreamed together this afternoon of what might be next for the two of us.  I explained what a blog and podcast are and he promised to stop by here someday when he gets adventurous.  And we prayed.  We prayed for each other but also for the future of Compassion International and our roles in it - that it would keep working and stay focussed on the cause of poverty and not just the symptoms.

Wells are good things to dig, but they will run dry.  Roads are great things to pave, but they’ll degrade in time.  Hospitals are wonderful things to erect, but their care is only so deep.  The cure for spiritual poverty lasts forever.  The ideal is bringing that cure along with the infrastructure, health care and education impoverished nations need.  That’s why Compassion works.

I know I’m going on and on and you’re tired of hearing about Compassion International right now, but I’m high.  This week, for me, is a week of being inspired so I can go out for another year and inspire the American church to help us cure the world of poverty.

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