This girl was not born with this deformity It started with a mouth ulcer, and then reached out to devour and distort and destroy her beautiful face. /
140,000 children – mostly in sub-Saharan Africa – catch it each year. And 80-90% of them will die, because it does not usually stop until it has destroyed their ability to eat food. They starve to death. /
Do you know what is the most heartbreaking thing of all about this? It’s not a particularly strong bacteria. It starts with a mouth ulcer, and an even moderately healthy immune system can fight it off successfully. That’s why it hasn’t happened to you. /
Consequently, only the very, very poorest and least healthy areas of the world still see this terrible disease…and they do not know it could be easily stopped. They see it as a curse from evil spirits.
My heart was breaking over this discovery two nights ago… as I was writing my last post, actually. I found myself wondering what could be done about it. There are a few groups of European doctors that donate their skill for reconstructive surgeries, but most of the time, these children live and die under their curse.
Lord? Look how terrible this is! It’s not even something deadly like cancer! That something so small…something that really isn’t that deadly in the grand scheme of things…is destroying so many lives! And what is there, really, for the world to do? No one even really knows what the initial signs look like because there’s no one there to document it until it gets obvious. And “make all the world’s children healthy” is a goal that is probably impossible as long as sin exists in the world.
How do You take it, Father? Seeing such destruction?
And then He began speaking to me.
You see that destruction, and you weep for outward appearances and for the destruction to their bodies. But that is what sin does in the hearts of every single human. And I see it all.
Even the smallest “not-so-deadly” sin reaches out to devour and distort and destroy the heart and soul that it found a home in. It is even worse when it happens there, in a soul.
I see that when it happens in your heart. I see it in every heart.
That’s why I sent Jesus.
There are no words to describe what that revelation is doing inside of me. Yet I can’t help adding, that if you DO want to do something, then sponsor another child. Compassion works to save them from this AND to lead them to the One who has saved their soul.