Talking about Maria in my last blog brought me to thinking about learning all that I’ve learned about hope. At times, being here, its pretty easy to feel hopeless, on a million different levels. Most people here will live in the same house, in the same town, for all of their lives. They are living in poverty. I watch people spend a days wages on lottery tickets that never win. I watch 13 year olds walk around with two infants of her own. I watch men and women with chronic illness sit, sick, because there is not a hospital within walking distance. And this is their life. This might be my life for a year, or maybe more, but I will always have the option of going back to the United States. I have a degree, and a family, and a home to go back to. I never really understood people saying “I want to make enough to live comfortably”, until I started to live uncomfortably. Until I started finding larvae in my bed, and eating some sort of white, mushy substance at least twice a day. Until I started feeling dirty, and tired, and blistered. And that is life, for most of the world. It feels pretty hopeless.
Secondly, I started to feel the hopelessness of ‘what can I actually even do?’. Even if I spend my whole life fighting for justice, will it really even make that big of a difference? And what if I go back to the states and get comfortable with all my things and forget about Maria, and Lajas, and cold showers.
But then there are the people here. Maria, in particular. As I sat in her small, wooden house, and looked at all of her possessions sitting in one room, I felt desperate for her. And then I looked at her face. And I listened to her words. And they were all about God’s goodness, and blessings, and hope. And I realized that there was a really important question I had to ask myself,
“Is Jesus enough for me?”
Am I really putting my hope in the Lord? If for the rest of my life, I was in a teeny wooden house, with all of my possessions in one room, a sick family member, living on a dollar a day, would I be smiling and telling everyone about how GOOD my God is?
I’m working on it:)
But it definitely made me realize where it was that hope comes from. It comes from the Lord. Always. As for me, I will put my hope in Jesus.
