Allergic Reactions or Velcro is Godly

It's pretty hard to think straight when your kid is filling your entire house with the shrillest screams ever to belt forth from the deepest bosom of a six month old. That's what's been happening around the Via house from about 6:30 tonight until 9:30.

Zeke has the flu. Not fun for anyone. The doctor put him on Amoxicillin tonight for the first time and I think he's having an allergic reaction to it. Inconsolable crying by the child makes for incoherent thinking and unprocessable (?) babbling for the parents. As a parent, or for anyone for that matter, it's hard to take. You always want your kids to be happy, healthy, hardy, and hairy. Well, maybe not the latter. You always want them to be enjoying the most out of life - i.e. to get the most use out of that 2-day old pampers swaddler (velcro tabs are a wonderful thing) - to get the most out of the month-old french fries gleefully discovered in hidden crevices of the carseat.

And so, when they're sick, life is not fun. Life is bad. Life is loud.

I wish I could get inside their little minds and figure out exactly what it is that's going on, because they can't communicate it yet. They want to. They try to. But they can't.

Hanging on the wall of our office is a beautiful painting of Africa. Superimposed over the continent are two young African children with swollen bellies and tired, distressed faces. Off to the side are written these words from Psalm 10:17-18

17 You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,

18 defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.

The shrieking, shrill cries of God's children always bothers Him. He hears them. He comes to their rescue. He knows what's going on inside of them even when they don't know quite how to communicate it. He loves to come to their defense from wicked men. He loves when they put their trust in Him. He loves when young men from the Dinka tribe of Sudan flee South from the LRA as refugees to Uganda providentially to be put in the path of a white man from Virginia who preaches the Gospel on the side of a basketball court and they put their faith in the only One who can heal all oppression (This happened to me and my dad last December in Uganda).

So, the next time I hear my children cry, I hope that I stop and recount the way God is moving and working around the world, hearing the cries of His children and coming to their defense. I hope that you'll stop and recount how God has come to Your defense, and then thank Him.

And pray for little Zeke. He'll make it. Pray for Tasha more. Especially when I'm gone during the day. More importantly, pray for the oppressed and afflicted people around the world that God the Father is drawing to Himself.