This week I have been asking myself: Can a heart be broken and filled at the same time? Not broken, then filled. But simultaneously broken, breaking and filled. How can it? Doesn’t whatever is doing the filling seep through the cracks made by the breaking?

I have visited several orphan feeding programs in Zambia this week. And the moments I have spent at each were so full that I can’t seem to recover. Each day I have felt broken apart from all I have seen. Broken apart by the suffering.  Most of these children eat once a day. It is not enough.  But then, I am filled by the life that bursts out of them anyway.  So much life packed into so little space. Not physical space, but space of time. Every moment filled to capacity, nearly exploding. Is it just that it is different and so my eyes struggle to take it in? Is it that suffering expands life somehow, making it fuller, more palpable?

I don’t have many words, and none at all that are profound, so, for now, I am relying on pictures to tell the story for me.

These women are volunteers for a church that feeds orphans. They are preparing the plates.

This sweet little girl came for food.

This rooster walks around one of the churches.

This little girl came for food.

The roof blew off this house where a widow with four kids lived.

This is a small restaurant between Lusaka and Ndola called the Fig Tree. It has a trampoline on its property.

At this church, there are several dogs who have been dropped off. It is so hot, so they sleep in the shade.

This is Given. I fell in love with her as soon as I saw her.

These ladies are making nshima, sausage, and cabbage for the orphans.

Given wanted to hold hands.

Time to eat!

400 church leaders kneeling at the end of the Global Leadership Summit in Ndola thanking God for the privilege of being invited to be a part of building Christ’s gathering — the church.