If you’ve read any number of blogs coming from Team A, you’ve surely
read about the desert wasteland we currently live in. The bland landscape reminds me of something I’ve envisioned the deserts of Iran to look like, not Peru. It’s a rolling montage of brown upon brown; bleak upon bleak. Each taxi ride away from it and into ‘greener pastures’ brings a refreshing breath of air. As the book
Captivating so clearly points out, we need beauty to survive. I now understand how the absence of beauty can easily become all that we see.
Yet among the rubble, the dirt piles and graffiti, are little glimpses of Hope. Take a taxi into any of the surrounding towns and you pass billboards advertising a drug-free Peru. They say things like, “Imagen, Peru sin drogas”. City workers are planting trees and constructing sidewalks in the medians. A lady who sews sweaters for a living on top of Lomo De Corbina comes to Christ. Little nuggets of Hope, strewn about this desert wasteland and to think, if we only focused on the despair, we could miss them! It kind of reminds me of the evening news back home. The more negative and juicy the stories, the better the ratings. That is one thing I definitely
don’t miss.
This idea of Hope.
This Christ who came in a time of confusion to earn our way to God through religious strivings…
who gave Mercy and Grace instead…
Like a blade of grass in a desert oasis….
Like the first budding flower after a long winter….
Like the woman at the well taking her first long drink of living water. She drops her old bucket to the ground knowing she won’t have to make this long trip anymore because Someone else made it for her.
Relief. Hope. Mercy. Peace. Christ.
