My last trip to Ethiopia left me dry.  Every day, I asked God, “Why do you have me here?”  And every day . . .  Nothing.
Nothing, that was, until on our last day when six of us visited the Sisters of Charity Hospital for the Destitute and Dying.
On the ride over, we struggled for answers to the question, “Why visit this place?” Were we just “compassion tourists” or did we really believe that during a one-hour visit, God might make His presence felt? We talked about what we might see there. We shared our fears and our hopes, we prayed for God’s presence and protection and we entered the hospital.
I’m left searching for words to describe the moment.
But how can words describe the broken and the dying among the poorest of the poor? What words can I use to convey the eyes, sunken but longing for human interaction, from a young woman who lays on the same cot she has shared with another for three years?  How can I possibly describe the smell, masked by incense, as we walk from room after room of men suffering from TB and HIV, who are nothing more than flesh on bones, like some horrific black and white picture inside the barracks of a Holocaust concentration camp? What words can I find to paint the picture of severely retarded children, playing on a threadbare carpet on a concrete floor with practically no toys, wearing garbage bags under their pants to keep them from soiling their clothes?
It sounds so hopeless. And to me, that’s proof that words are inadequate. So I shift gears, searching for words to honor people like Ryan, the student from Lebanon, Barta, the student from Spain, and Esther, the student from Menlo Park, New Jersey, each giving up a month or more of their summer to volunteer at the hospital.  And what about the Sisters who dedicate their lives to caring for these children of God?
I long for words to tell the stories – like the story of the 21-year-old young woman sold to be a servant girl by her uncle when at 15, her parents died of AIDS. I’m tempted to see her uncle as a callous, greedy monster, until I understand that his action might have been an act of compassion, ensuring her food and a place to stay dry and warm, while at the same time providing a little something for his family. After being sold by one family (in the country) to another (in the city), a bus hit this young woman on her way to the market one day. Lying on the street, she was left to die because passerby knew she had no money to pay for care, until someone picked her up and brought her to the Sisters of Charity Hospital. For the past three years, she has laid on this cot, her body mangled, twisted and her legs paralyzed.
As I sit holding her hands and a Sister massages her legs with oil to keep the circulation strong, I notice the Amharic Bible and the picture of Jesus taped to the wall with the picture of the Virgin Mary. Through an interpreter, the young woman explains how God gives her strength. She talks about hope!  Suddenly, as I dare look in her eyes for the first time during our five minutes together, I recognize that it’s true!  She looks sweetly into my eyes with a sense of confidence about her life that I lack about my own. 
The tears flow, but they are tears shed for the sadness in my life, and tears of joy for her.
In room after room, I encounter story after story. In room after room, I encounter broken body after broken body. In room after room, I encounter God’s lovely, but broken and forgotten children.  And with tears in my eyes and a heavy heart, something clicks. There!  Back in the dark corner of that room!  Who is on that cot?  Is it me?
As I confront (for the zillionth time) the ways I am broken and impoverished, I suddenly start to see how little difference exists between the people on the cots and the six people who arrived on the bus to visit. There and then, I begin to lean into the ways I am just like the people I’m visiting. I start celebrating the joy of holding them and of them holding me. I rest in the moments of praying with them. I realize how we encourage each other by smiling right past our inability to communicate and the inadequacy of our words.  I accept the idea that they are ministering to me!
And there it is!  Right there!  In those moments without words at all, I feel God’s powerful presence.  His Holy Spirit erases all of the distance, all of the differences, all of the human inadequacies and brokenness.  I can see God drawing us to one another so we can know His rule and reign are present.  Words, it seems, are not necessary.
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As I’ve reflected on this experience over the past six months, I’ve also come to understand something about how I am different from the young woman on the cot.  She, at least, fully accepted and embraced her brokenness, and rejoiced in the truth that God loved her, not in spite of it, but because that was how she was made.  She understood that through her weakness, His power was made perfect.
I’m still working to claim that in my life.  Thanks to my young friend on the cot in Addis Ababa, I have a hope and a confidence that He is leading me to the place where I will fully claim His power at work through my broken life, accepting completely that I am His dearly beloved son!