Miraculous Chewing

My colleague’s voice quivered with emotion on the video recording. As a doctor in West Africa for more than a decade, she had seen plenty of tough cases. She had asked me to consult on a patient as a Speech Language Pathologist. What had my colleague so ecstatic? Our nine-year-old patient was… chewing.

A school-aged child performing a simple motor skill typically learned before the first year of age isn’t usually noteworthy, let alone miraculous. However, my colleague and I understood the context. He had suffered a massive stroke six months prior, and he lost many motor, sensory, and cognitive functions as a result. When I visited him three months after the stroke he was on a liquid diet, he was severely undernourished, and he was at risk of aspiration (food entering his airway instead of his esophagus). Furthermore, he was bed-ridden. He couldn’t stand independently, or even take a single step.

His heartwarming half-smile won me over instantly. I gave his parents some tips on how to safely feed their son, and I tried to encourage them. I could see how much they were selflessly serving and sacrificing for the sake of their disabled son. We prayed over him for his healing in Jesus’ name.

The next time I visited, several months later, I was shocked to see the young boy swiftly walking around their shared yard, his uneven gait hardly slowing him down. But even more significant for me was the progress in his oral-motor abilities. In other words… chewing. This is because I not only knew the context; I also knew the stakes.  

The ability to chew opens the door for so much progress in feeding. If he could chew, he could move on to solid foods and self-feeding, both of which have an impact on nutrition and independence, as well as protection from aspiration. His continued improvement this far out from a stroke also gave me hope that he might learn to communicate again, even though he was currently unable to speak. Can you see why we were so excited about the simple act of chewing?

When we think about our work as Christ followers, and more specifically, our role as international workers in Senegal, to ‘multiply disciples everywhere,’ we can easily get caught up in the size and speed of the task. It’s understandable. We are well aware of the scale and urgency of the mission, and we long for seismic movements toward Christ. Our history includes massive revivals, but these are not always how disciples are multiplied. The speed and size of the movement are not the only reasons to exclaim, “Incredible! Miraculous!”

God understands the context, and He knows the stakes. We may dismiss one conversation, act of service, or prayer as insignificant, but God sees deeper than we do. Just as my informed perspective allowed me to get excited about chewing progress, God, from his perfect perspective, knows full well how significant it was for this Fulani family (an unreached people group that is 0.01% Christian) to be prayed over in Jesus’ name. Even now they are witnessing the astounding, progressive healing of their son. 

Even in other areas of my life where I feel like my impact is so small, the Holy Spirit reminds me of the context and the stakes. A group of women living in an impoverished fishing village attended weekly literacy classes, and learned for the first time how to write their own names. Might that be their first step toward knowing their true identity in Christ? Hearing-impaired students attend a Christian school for the deaf. Can the hard work of distinguishing between ‘buh’ and ‘puh’ move them toward an encounter with the God who sees (and hears) them? 

Kingdom work, especially in the remaining unreached parts of the world, may not be marked by what we consider incredible or miraculous. Sometimes, it looks a lot more like… chewing. It might appear to be insignificant or mundane. But having a divine perspective of the context and the stakes helps us see more clearly, with eternity in mind. After all, as God reminded his servant sent to anoint a king, “the LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). In the gospels, Jesus emphasized a determining factor of who are ultimately welcomed by the Father to receive their eternal inheritance: whether or not they served the “least of these” in his name (Matthew 25). This kind of work is not flashy. It’s not big and it’s not swift. God is teaching me to be content with doing the work he has placed in front of me at his pace, and trusting that in his eyes, it is significant.

On a recent trip to Barcelona with my husband, I saw many of the works of Antoni Gaudí, a famous architect from the region, including the Sagrada Familia. It is an enormous basilica still under construction to this day, almost one hundred years after Gaudí’s death. When asked by his colleague if he was bothered that the project would not be finished in his lifetime, Gaudi responded that he was not. He knew that value would be added to his work by the collaboration of artists and masons not yet born, but even more importantly he knew who he was really working for. And, to quote Gaudí, “my client is not in a hurry.”

Does knowing that God is not in a hurry inform how might you pray for the ongoing work among the hardest, least-reached places of the world? In what areas of your life do you see progress that might look like ‘chewing?’ Ask God to give you his divine perspective on the context and stakes that can transform your perspective. In all things give him the glory!