Can You Hear Us?

Then [Jesus] called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?

Mark 8:34-38

I wrote this song after I met a man at the Urbana 06 mission conference with an amazing story. He was missing a couple of teeth and wore thread-bare sandals. He told me that when he was about twenty years old, he left his comfortable and “normal” life in the U.S. to move into the garbage city in Cairo, Egypt. I asked him, “Why?” I will never forget his answer. He told me that he moved to Cairo “To love people to Jesus. To love the dirty, broken and lost. To live with them. To wash my face with them, with their dirty water and their homemade soap. To brush my teeth with them with their homemade toothpaste. To eat with them, even if it was just once a day. To sleep as they slept.  To get sick as they got sick, with no funds for medicine. To bring light into the darkest corners of their drug-ridden and alcohol-flooded streets. To fight alongside of them for their land.”

This man went to some of the poorest people on earth as Jesus came to us, leaving all comfort and wealth and becoming one of them. When I met him two years ago, he told me that there had been a few brothers and sisters added to the Kingdom in his neighborhood, and I am confident the harvest is plentiful in his garbage city. However, the workers are few. “Lord of the harvest, send more workers!” I don’t remember this young man’s name and he may not live much longer on this earth, but I can imagine the Lord saying “Well done, good and faithful servant” when this man enters His presence. What a beautiful sound it will be.  And I imagine he will have the most beautiful teeth in all of heaven!

-Kaitlin