Should we love them any less?

We came to serve in Uganda as a family, knowing that challenges would certainly play a part of our new life. Some of them we anticipated, and some we didn’t. We knew sickness would most likely come our way at some stage, and that would just be a fact of life here.

After one month of being here sickness free, we started getting hit. Every day for over 2 weeks now we’ve had someone sick with either vomiting/diarrhoea bugs, spider bites, skin infections, nasty abcesses and more!

As a mum you feel it’s part of your job to protect your kids from sickness if you can. Some things are unavoidable, yet others we could avoid. I could tell them not to hug the orphan with skin infections, to spend less time with those that look sick, and more time with the ones who are ok. I could avoid holding the little ones hand that is covered in snot, dirt and who knows what else. But I haven’t. Yes, I have instructed Lily to ask me before kissing them, and we go over how to keep ourselves safe from certain diseases - but we don’t love on them any less. Jesus didn’t instruct his disciples to love the unlovely any less, in fact he did the opposite and led by example as he poured out love upon them. The look on these kids faces as they feel the embrace of another child who is loving them just as they are is priceless. They know they are loved.

So we will continue to pray for resistance to bugs, we will continue to love with our actions as well as our words, and we will continue to see God move through the embrace of a child.