The Janitor

A few years ago a group of researchers were commissioned to undertake a study in a handful of orphanages in Mexico and Poland. They compared scientifically the things they had in common. They found that they all were equally as sparse, underfunded, and understaffed. The researchers were looking at how this affected the children, especially the little ones who were raised in these institutions from their birth. Among the similarities in the orphanages: rooms were sparse and bare, with many cribs, and just a couple of nurses who looked after the children. In both countries, most of the children never even got out of their cribs over the course of the day.

The researchers attached electrodes to the babies' heads to track their brain activity. What they found in each one of these orphans – these little children – living in this kind of environment was this. There was no activity at all or very underdeveloped activity in one particular section of the brain because it had not been stimulated. Yet, as the researchers gathered all their data, they found that there was one exception. Something was different in one particular orphanage in a rural town in Poland. This orphanage's conditions were exactly the same as all the other orphanages. Yet the children tested there did not have the same deficits the others had.
Called To Research Restoration…

One of the researchers was so puzzled by what they had found, she decided to go out of her way, and travel to this orphanage to try to find out why the children were emotionally healthier than all the others they had studied. She examined everything: their cribs, their food, the ratios of nurses and caregivers to the children. There didn't seem to be any major discrepancies. The data matched perfectly with all the other orphanages.

So she began to interview all the staff that interacted with the children. Still, everything appeared to be the same. No extra help was observed. Nothing appeared different.

Then late one night as she was talking to the director, she saw a woman walk by that she hadn't talked to yet. "Excuse me," she said to the director, "does that woman work here?"

"Indeed she does," the director replied.

"I don't think I have interviewed her yet," the researcher said. "Could I do that?"

The director answered, "Well yes you can, but you really will be wasting your time. She is really no one, just the night janitor. She just comes in at night and leaves in the morning."

"Does she have any interaction with the children?" the researcher asked.

"No, she doesn't," the director said. "She just cleans up. She's a simple woman. Like I said, she comes here every night and leaves in the morning."

The researcher then asked, "Is it all right if I still talk to her?"

The puzzled orphanage director granted her request.
A Secret Revealed…

So they secured a translator and the researcher sat down with the woman, this humble custodian. Her responses to the researcher's questions were short and simple, and actually the woman seemed a bit intimidated. And then the interviewer asked her, "Can you tell me about your interactions with the children? To what extent do you interact with them? Do you ever touch them or talk to them?"

The now frightened woman looked down at her shoes and softly mumbled something to the translator. "She wants to know if she's in trouble," the translator said.

The researcher responded, "No, no, she's not in trouble. We are just trying to figure out what is making the difference here in the lives of the children compared to all the other orphanages that we have been studying."

There was a long, long pause, and finally the night janitor looked up and said, "I'm so sorry, but when I finish my cleaning and my sweeping and my mopping, cleaning the toilets and the sinks, I wash up, and I take my last hour and walk to the cribs of the children. As they're sleeping I lean over… I can't help it, but I pick each one of them up, and I hold them to my chest. I rub their backs and I kiss the top their heads, and I speak words of love to them. And then I put them down. That's all I do. I'm sorry, I spend maybe two or three minutes with each child, but that's all I do. That's all I do…"

The stunned researcher, after gathering her composure, simply said these words to this humble woman who was "just the night janitor" well… "apparently all you do…that is enough." Being picked up, touched and loved two or three minutes a night had made the difference in the lives of these little orphaned children.
God Values A Simple Act Of Love…

If we all could stop a moment and touch the life of a needy child amid the everyday moments of our lives, I know we would hear God say the same words that flowed from the researchers heart, to each of us… "Apparently, that is enough." It is enough because it is His hand and His love that reaches out through our individual lives to make a difference in the life of an orphan. God always stands ready to make something out of even the smallest offering. The Bible reveals countless stories where miraculously God took "someones seemingly nothing" and transformed it into "something life changing" for someone in great need.