There is this lively little five year old girl at one home we serve. Her name is Fatima.
Fatima, with my husband, Tim, while spending time at our house
She is a bundle of energy and orneriness oozes out of her pores! During Semana Santa (the week before Easter), several of the kids went home to stay with relatives for the holiday. Not Fatima. She stayed at the children’s home because there was nowhere else for her to go. That in itself made me very sad, so I thought of what I could do to cheer her up. In my world cookies always help so I brought her and seven other kids, that did not have anywhere to go, to my house, to make cookies.
They had a blast. They all helped measure out ingredients and felt like pastry chefs as we baked and ate the cookies. She and her little friend Angel cleaned the dishes. They were allowed to play in the sink with suds and water as long as they wanted. I even had a little stool that they could stand on! Pretty close to heaven for a five year old.
I could not help but think of how this “normal” thing in my life never happens in these kids’ lives. They are not allowed to play in the kitchen while someone cooks. They don’t get to lick the beaters or eat raw cookie dough (I know you are not supposed to do that!). They cannot eat delicious warm cookies right out of the oven. For a disheartened moment, I was incredibly sad for little Fatima and for all the things that she was missing in childhood. But then I looked around and realized that God had brought many people into little Fatima’s life to make it better and I just happened to be one of them! Praise the Lord for loving the orphan.
2 Corinthians 4:7 “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay pots containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God and not ourselves”.