Settling In

I called my house "home" for the first time last week.  Crazy when I step back and think that I've only been here for three months.  It took me several years and countless backyard smallmouth to call Ohio home.  

Every three weeks, I run night shift.  I sit in the dark dorm with the hum of the fan pulling in cool air.  Rustling shadows cast on the walls by moonlight slowly become motionless, and for a second, time seems to stand still.  It is in these times that I talk with God.  Not to Him.  With Him.  Tucked deep between lost and nowhere....God.  In a crowded room of bunk beds with the faint stench of dirty clothes....God.  My mind drifts to the leaving of relationships that are more valuable to me than the richest man can afford, inching across the West with my belongings in a "sack", and the indescribable drop of my heart as I drive onto a campus of unknowns.  God awakes one of the boys for a timely repositioning of sheets, and through this....He speaks.  

"I love them....just like I love you.  What you have done to the least of men, you are doing to me, but your sacrifices are as worthless to me as menstrual rags.  It is I who gives you a burning desire for love and obedience."

For the second time in three months, my emotions explode through teardrops, and I'm instantly refilled with an overwhelming compassion for each of the fourteen boys.  Satan desires to take our focus off of God and place it in our dead works, or more specifically, ourselves.  Do we truly desire God, or are we just seeking the reward?  I desire compassion.  

"Then He added, "Now go and learn the meaning of this scripture: "I want you to show mercy, not sacrifices.  For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they sinners."  

Mat 9:13