By Virgil Gulker

When school children are matched with KIDS HOPE USA mentors from neighborhood churches, they are full of questions.

“Are you paid?” they ask, because every other person who spends time with them at school is paid.  They soon discover that the mentors are good—but are paid nothing.

“Are you coming back?” they ask.  Because so many people, including non-custodial parents, promise to visit but consistently disappoint them.   The mentors come back week after week.

But the question children ask more than any other is this:  “How many other kids do you see at my school?”

Clara was a first grader when she was matched with her mentor, Miss Ruth. Clara asked Miss Ruth that question not once or twice but each week for over 50 weeks. Utterly lacking in self-esteem, this sexually abused child simply could not believe she had sufficient value to make a caring adult, especially Miss Ruth, want to come into her life over and over and over again. It was Miss Ruth’s love, expressed in her faithfulness, that touched Clara’s heart and changed her life.

Miss Ruth, and all the other mentors, are a lot like Jesus.  They, like Him, love consistently in faith and hope.  In their faithfulness, they model Jesus’s love to the children, every time they meet with them.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and hinder them not, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

 Mt 19:14

MK 10:14

LK 18:16