Lori Geerts, Kids Hope USA Director, Ottawa Reformed Church
Several years ago, God called our church to the awesome opportunity and responsibility of being a pilot in a ministry called Kids Hope USA. What a calling God has given that we get to continue that mission today! Some of our first Kids Hope USA kids are now in their 30s, and some mentors still stay in touch with their former students.
Bethany is one of those mentors who has stayed in touch with her student Peter, now a junior in high school and on the varsity football team. One day, Peter invited Bethany to one of his games. She invited me, our Kids Hope USA director, to go along.
BEAMS OF LIGHT
At the football game, we noticed a lot of lights. Moonlight beamed on the stadium. Stadium lights beamed on the field. There were the high school cheerleaders beaming light on the players, cheering and encouraging them throughout the game. They cheered the whole game—when it was tied at half-time and when the team ended up losing by a lot. They were all in for the duration.
That is what Kids Hope USA mentors do! They beam light, the light of Christ into their student’s life. They encourage and cheer them on. They are Christ’s role model and stick around for the duration. While Peter was upset at the loss of their game, his mentor Bethany continued to encourage and support him for his effort and leadership in the game.
SHINING LIGHT IN DARK PLACES
Many of our Kids Hope USA students have had to navigate some difficult stuff, whether dealing with neglect, abuse, academic challenges, family divorce, a new school, having English as a second language, or just not having a friend.
That’s where Beams of Light in the form of Kids Hope USA mentors and prayer partners step in.
Our theme verse for that year we went to the football game was Ephesians 3:20, which says, “With God’s power working in us, God can do much, much more than anything we can ask or imagine.”
It’s God (our Beam of Light) working in us, using us to be His hands, His feet, His heart to our Kids Hope USA kids. And as we begin to pray, care, hope, and dream for this student we’ve been privileged to mentor, that God can do more than we can ask or imagine!
As we enter a new school year, Kids Hope USA mentors and prayer partners, will you:
Be the beams of light – the cheerleaders – to your student this year?
Spend time with Christ in His Word and through prayer so that you can beam His light by being a role model of Christ?
Remember that God can do far more than we can ask or imagine
Prayer
We thank you, Father, for sending us your Son, not as some ancient superman but as a little boy and for endowing Him with a lifelong love of children. We remember how He told His disciples that, unless they became like children, they would be unable to enter your kingdom and that children crowded around him wherever he went.
We give you thanks for children; for their forthright, unblushing curiosity; for their skill at living for the moment and cramming each moment full of living; for their grudging acknowledgment of their dependence upon us; their assertion of their growing independence from us; and for the trust they place in us and in you.
We pray for children in our own midst: children being brought up fatherless or motherless, by overworked and exhausted single parents, children attending overcrowded schools where the law of the jungle prevails and childhood is hardly even an option; unwanted children, neglected children, abused children who are as dear to you as our well-fed ones.
Grant those whose life work it is to help children a double portion of strength, patience and grace.
O God, open our hearts to the youngest, the smallest, the weakest.
Amen
*Names changed