IT’S NOT MAKE-BELIEVE!

Faith fans the flame of imagination.

O.K. I might as well come clean with you. I spent the day in a slum in Kenya hanging out with three gorgeous young “runway models.”

They wanted to play make believe. I said, I am your guy. I told them that when my grandkids came to visit, we had a playroom upstairs that was filled with costumes and props. The bonus room above my garage has been a restaurant, a train station, a race car pit at Daytona. Transformed by a few props and a lot of imagination.

Poverty and hunger steals imagination before a child can blink. It takes the color, the taste, and the sweet fragrance of God’s love and replaces them with pain, want, and depression.

Today, at the Miracle in Mathare, pain, want, and depression were banished. And as the young “make-believe” runway models strutted their stuff wearing the latest fashions from Paris, I saw a teachable moment. I explained to them that without faith it is impossible to imagine. Without faith, all goes dark.

I asked the over 200 kids in our upper room at the school to imagine a day with no food. A day with no love. A day with no singing, or laughing , or dancing or chasing. And you know what? With puzzled faces and confused eyes they said, “Pastor Mike…we can’t imagine a day like that—where would such a terrible place be?

I caught Madame Millicent’s eye as she quickly turned away so the kids could not see her tears. She knew the place.

I said, “Kids. That place is called…Mathare.”

They didn’t know about hunger…they are fed every day. They couldn’t imagine not being loved…the staff was standing all around them as they do everyday at the school. Loving them. Encouraging them.

They didn’t understand an absence of fun. Why, you could hear the “fun” blocks away from the school this morning as we drove up.

God has brought imagination to the slum

But all of the adults in the room remembered. Tiny, crowded, hot, stinky rooms. Just a little rice and a few beans every day. No curriculum. No school uniforms. The only way these kids will ever know any of those things is to study the history of the Miracle in Mathare. Because— it is— history.

A Celebration was in order today. The buildings are complete and paid for. The past is past. Today, we stepped into the future of life in the slum. And life…is very good in Mathare.