Calvin

“I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick...” Isaiah 34:16

I read that yesterday - A glimpse into God's heart. 

Today – I think my heart broke.

I had been working with Violet – the youngest and tiniest of all the babies. She will reach term in nine days.

Putting the tiny girl down and washing my hands, I saw one of the managers approach me with a bundle in her arms. I'd been asked to care for this new baby boy who had just arrived yesterday. According to the Age Exam he was a year old – the eldest of all the babies here, yet severely malnourished.

She stood in front of my and held out the mass of blankets. “Go to mommy, Calvin.”

I took him up in my arms and something in me dropped.

The comparison between him and Violet was unreal.

“How much does he weigh?!”

She answered. 

I walked out to the back porch so nobody could see me cry. At a year old, Calvin was three Kilograms.

When babies are first found in an abandoned state, they are held almost continually for the first few days. They're lacking a lot of love and care, that needs to be replenished  and they need to be protected, while watching carefully for any change in physical status and nourishment. Being assigned with him, I wouldn't touch or handle any of the others, as the risk for illness or infection were too great at this stage. Calvin peered up at me – the biggest, darkest, most innocent eyes I'd seen in my life. His face was set and serious. He didn't smile or laugh, but slowly reached the tiniest fingers out from the blanket and curled them around the neck of my shirt. A narrow feeding tube ran from his nostril and around the back of his oversized pyjamas – a syringe for feedings hanging at the end.

Having been brought in yesterday, Calvin was skin and bones. His ribs, leg, arm and neck bones stood out, as if his leathered skin had been merely stretched over top – covered in insect bites and multiple scabs. His fontanelles were sunken from dehydration and when he cried, no tears came out. Social workers had been out in the community immunizing children, when neighbours told of a baby they had heard crying in a nearby abandoned home. The staff had broken down the locked doors, to find the little boy, one year-old, starving, dehydrated and probably barely able to cry any longer. Calvin's parents had last been seen, leaving the house, over two days ago.

I stayed with Calvin during my work shift, feeding him every two hours, monitoring his vitals and blood sugar closely and administering Oral Rehydration therapy. Moreover, others always came by and talked to him, sang to him - paying him attention long-due, and I know prayed for him. It hurt to see such a beautiful, vulnerable and innocent baby, so miserably discarded and left to die; yet with such relief, I know he is now safe. In a country where abandoned may be more and resources may be thinner, God is still the same all-powerful, all-loving Shepherd and physician. He hasn't once left those children out of His sight. Rather, “Like a shepherd, he tends his flock. He gathers the lambs in his arms, carries them close to his heart...” Isaiah 40:11