(this is from last week)
AAAH, the sound of a free day :0) The possibilities are endless. Well, as far as a few bucks can get us anyway :0) With an hour and a dollar, we can get to the coast and enjoy the Caribbean beach :0)
Last week, we went to Tela (the local beach). The view was beautiful, the water felt like a bath, it was nice and overcast so it was not too hot and we didn’t get sunburned. For all intensive purposes, it should have been a perfect day! But I went home feeling drained and disappointed. I am not here for a vacation! I get it that we need rest and to be recharged so we can pour out into others, but I my heart wanted to cry out, ‘there is no day off from walking with the Lord!!’ But I felt like that’s what I took.
Even though this is month 2, in a lot of ways, it feels like month 1 for us as a team since we lived with the entire squad last month. We are still figuring out how to be ourselves, and operate in our gifts. I had a lot of things running through my mind that day and a lot of reasons I held back, but none of them were that I was following what the Lord was asking me to do. This left me feeling depleted and tired instead of refreshed.
I decided that for this free day, I would take an all together different approach! So, as we sat by the side of the road, waiting to flag down the bus to Tela, I challenged that we should invite the Holy Spirit to break our hearts today. So, we prayed, and God showed up! That day, many of us returned with a story of how the Holy Spirit broke our hearts for someone we passed by, and how we cried out to God on their behalf.
For me, my heart was broken for the beach vendors; people who walk the beach with baskets on their heads offering coconuts and hair braiding to anyone lingering about (most especially the pack of Gringos). The day before, they were just a pesky annoyance. I felt like I couldn’t talk with them, because if you even looked up at them to say no thank you, they would take your attention as permission to hound you continuously. They have no interest in talking with you, they just want to sell you something. So we were caught in this awkward cycle of blankly saying ‘No Gracias’ without looking up at them, rudely treating like they are completely insignificant.
But they are not insignificant! They are seen and known by the Father! They have a story that is intricately woven by the Creator of all! So I began to cry out to the Lord on their behalf! Begging Him to intervene and break the chains of addiction, poverty and lies that are controlling their lives. That He would bless them and let them know Him. That He would be their provider and their source. That they would change their purpose on the beaches from getting every dollar from the traveler, to seeing their purpose in the kingdom of God! That they would begin to pray and minister as they sell, and through that, as their focus becomes about the fathers business, that He would miraculously provide abundantly above what they could have provided for themselves!
There are people all around you in this swirl of life. Will you invite the Holy Spirit to break your heart for their needs? To let you see beyond the arms and legs rushing past you to the heart and soul of another person, dearly loved by Jesus? What stranger can you pray for today?
