Lost Words Dictionary

Lost Words Dictionary

Today, a boy came to our mission station.

Several weeks ago, the inner part of his leg from his thigh to his ankle was burned in a fire. 

He comes to us for the cleaning and care of his wound. 

I am the one who cleans and cares for him.

He screams and cries as I wash the burn and apply the Silvadene cream a kind doctor left for me to give to people who cannot access or afford hospital care.

The liberation theologian Gustavo Guttirrrez teaches us that the word ‘poverty’ has three meanings: 

1) Solidarity with the poor, along with protest against the conditions under which they suffer; 

2) Spiritual poverty, in the sense of a child-like readiness to do God’s will; 

3) Real poverty as an evil - that is something that God does not want. 

My small friend is living in real poverty.

It is evil. 

God does not want it.

Tears roll down my cheeks as I see his pain and hear his cries.

I make a promise to the little boy to work against this kind of poverty for the rest of my life.

“What can I do to help him?” I think.

After the treatment was done and he was resting beneath the thatched roof of the bamboo shelter, I went to my house and got a baseball cap for him, my favorite old, battered Detroit Tiger’s cap that I have had since I was his age. 

That cap has been all over the world with me. 

“I’ll give my favorite hat to my small friend,” I say to myself.

We know the mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, when it is planted, becomes the largest of all plants. 

It become so big, the birds can sit in the shade of it’s branches.

Giving my favorite cap to my small friend is a small thing. 

It’s just an old, battered cap. 

But it is my favorite old, battered cap. 

And I give it to him.

Because he is a human being.

He is worth everything.

To me.

To the world.

He smiles when he puts on that Detroit Tiger’s baseball cap.

I will always remember that moment.

I will always remember him.

Small things are big things.