It happened again. I
was blown away by another child volunteer at Feed My Starving Children. This time it was a young girl, maybe about 10
years old.
At the end of each packing session, all the volunteers are
invited out to the warehouse to pray over the food that they packed. I was in charge of the prayer for this
particular session. I started by
explaining what we pray for. We pray
that God would watch over the food on it’s long journey- it has to travel
thousands of miles on trucks and ships through some chaotic places, so we pray
for God’s protection for the food. As I
was explaining this, a girl right in front of me raised her hand. No one has ever had a question before when I
was explaining what to pray for, but I finished the sentence I was on and then
asked her what her question was. She
asked where this food was going. As we
are packing up the food during the volunteer sessions, it’s sometimes hard to
know what pallets of food are going to go where. So, I explained that I wasn’t sure where this
food was going but that they could all look on the upcoming shipment board once
they got back into the other room to see where the shipments were going over
the next week.
I went on to explain that we also pray for the kids that
will be receiving the food. We pray that
the kids who need the food the most would get it and that the food would
nourish the bodies of all who eat it.
Finally, we pray to give thanks for all the volunteers.
I then invited a volunteer to pray aloud for us. The girl who had asked me the question about
where the food was going raised her hand.
I chose her. We bowed our heads and then
she prayed perhaps the most beautiful prayer I have heard in years.
I’m sorry I can’t share with you her exact prayer, but I’m going
to try to get as close as I can. Please
imagine this in a little girl’s voice, soft yet strong, confident, and clear.
“Dear God, we thank you for all this food here. We don’t know where this food is going. We don’t know what country it is going to. We don’t know the children that will eat this
food. We don’t know what this food will
have to go through to get to the kids.
We don’t know what kind of condition the children will be in. God… Lord… we don’t know anything.
(At this point her seemingly rambling prayer was making me a
little nervous. I was wondering where
she was heading with all this and if she was going to get to the other prayer
points. But she knew exactly where she
was going with this prayer.)
But God, you know
everything. You know exactly what country this food is going
to. You know exactly what storms and
waves will blow up on the seas. Keep
watch over the food and the boat drivers.
You know the truck drivers and any problems they may face. Keep them safe. You know exactly who is going to eat this
food. You know each and every one of
those children and you know everything about them.
We ask that you watch over these children that you know and
love. Bring this food safely to them and
make sure that this food makes them healthy.
Amen.”
This little girl prayed with such passion and spirit. I think all the other volunteers gathered
around the food praying were touched by the prayer- it was filled with such
wisdom and truth. How true it is that we
humans know so little compared to what God knows. When we ship off a shipping container of food
we know what country it’s going to, but we don’t know a whole lot more than that. But God does indeed know where exactly every
single bag of food is going and God knows each and every person that will eat
some of the food. Feed My Starving
Children and our partner organizations can do a lot to try to get food safely to
its destination but at a certain point we have to rely on God and God’s knowledge,
power, and protection.
At the age of 10,
this little girl understood all this. May we all have the understanding and wisdom of this 10-year-old.
