This quote below comes from the letter of James and is not hanging framed on my wall. It lives inside me. It is one of those sentences you cannot read without it doing something to you — without asking yourself: am I actually doing this?

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." — James 1:27

For me, Mwanzo is not a project. It is an answer to a question God placed in my heart a long time ago: what are you doing with what you have been given?

I believe God made us this way. Not to look inward, but to look around us. To see who is struggling. To stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. That longing to do what is good — I do not believe it is accidental. It is how we were meant to be.

What you see when you are in Kenya

When you are in Kenya, at The Ark, you notice something. Not on the first day — but gradually. You see how people live with a trust I rarely encounter in the Netherlands. A trust that they will be taken care of. That things will be alright. Not because everything is in order — far from it — but because they know they are not alone.

And then things happen that you cannot explain. Things no human being could have thought of or planned. A donation that arrives at exactly the right moment. A meeting that opens an entirely new door. A child who returns to his family in a way nobody had foreseen. I do not call that coincidence. I call that providence.

There is something liberating about living in dependence on God. You let go of control — or rather, you realise you never truly had it. And in that letting go, space is created. Space for miracles you could never have imagined yourself.

An example

We had planned to buy mattresses for all the children, but in Kenya everything takes a long time, so we hadn’t got round to it yet. The next day, we had a visitor: Jeddy. Jeddy had grown up as an orphan herself and had promised God that she would devote her life to looking after children who, like her, were orphans, if God would help her set up her own business.

She is now the owner of Fortune Foams and visits a children’s home twice a year to share what she receives from God.

As a result, we were able to spend the money we had set aside for the mattresses on something else. Apart from the fact that Jeddy does such wonderful work, it was the timing that struck me as most miraculous.

And if you do not believe?

Perhaps you are reading this thinking: that is fine for him, but I do not believe any of that.

That is honest. And it changes nothing of what I want to say to you.

Because the longing to do what is good — that is not reserved for people of faith. It lives in people. In you. Whether you call it a calling, a moral compass, or simply: knowing what is right and acting on it.

The children at The Ark have no interest in whether you believe. They have an interest in people who look out for them. And those people — believers or not — make the difference.

Do what is good. From who you are, from what you believe. That is enough.