across the table

Last night we were eating some of my most creative spaghetti yet, when I looked across the table at the two girls sitting there. Both whose minds were obviously far from there, leaving their bodies mechanically filling their stomachs. One, got results back from second term of secondary school level 2, and appears to be failing in every subject except one. She stays with us because her mother is abusive, mostly verbally, but sometimes physically as well. Now it's time for a 4 week holiday and she's supposed to go back to the village and help her mom in the garden. But she's afraid of her mother's tongue concerning what is revealed on that slip of paper. It breaks my heart, one because every night and every morning early she's studying her notes, she leaves for school at 7am and comes back after 5pm normally, she helps us with dishes and mopping and cooking and then begins studying until she sleeps around 11pm and then wakes up at around 5am to start studying again. She's not failing for lack of trying, maybe she's a product of the terrible education system here, her spelling is atrocious, and she most likely has some learning disability that will never be diagnosed this side of heaven, (and there she won't have it :) ). Now secondly, she'll go home to her mother who will begin by telling her that she wishes that she would have been the one who died and not her sisters, and then go on from there. I just want to take her and hug her and never let her go. Oh Father, let her feel your sweet embrace.
Then there's the other girl, we had just come back from a walk to pick up some things for supper, where she poured out a few things on her heart. Her mother has taken another boyfriend, she tells me it's the 4th one this year, and she just can't believe it. Her mother thinks he's nice as he has given her two skirts already. And I'm thinking in my mind, yeah, two skirts and AIDS probably.... But this girl knows that her mom's new boyfriend isn't all that. He's already approached my young friend who is not yet 14 twice asking her to be his lover. She is not impressed to say the least. Her and her brother have tried to tell her mom that this guy is not good for her, but the mom isn't buying it, he gave her two skirts after all. Oh Lord, have mercy. I'm glad my friend knows that multiple men isn't the solution to a hungry soul, but I hate that she has to live in such a situation, to the point that she had begun praying for a family, because she doesn't feel like she has one.
As I gaze across the table, at these young, beautiful women, whose minds are far away, I feel so helpless. I want to solve everything for them, take both their mothers, lock them away somewhere and pour the love of Jesus in to their hearts, directly. I want to shake them and say, wake up, look at the gift God has given you in your precious daughter. But for now, I'm trying to love these girls the way I know my Father does. Father let them know that love that surpasses understanding, let them feel your embrace as they face their mothers in the next few days, and the rest of their lives. Let your truth reign in their hearts.
What about you, who is sitting across the table from you? How can you minister the love of our Father to those that He has brought into your life? Do you even have time to listen, or the courage to let such people into your life? It's a lot more convenient to just keep going and not sit and listen and hurt with and love on the one our Father puts in front of us. But I dare you to try, because I know there are hurting souls across every table, and our Father longs to embrace them through us.