I may not know the scent of a rotting corpse, but I think I’ve come pretty close. Watching Criminal Minds has taught me that upon the discovery of decaying flesh, you cover your nose, your eyes begin to water, and the immediate need to vomit becomes almost unbearable to suppress.
Arriving at the dumpsite, my response was eerily similar. It was unlike any scent I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime. The air was putrid, acidic, and pungent. While my nose was working overtime, my eyes scanned to find the sight equally excruciating.
There are things in this life that are hard to express in their entirety without experiencing them firsthand. This is one of those things. My expectations for “Dump Ministry” was that we would arrive on site of a trash pile, with lots of men fully clothed and noses plugged to be protected, and we would share a message and a meal together.
What I was not prepared for was this: a dump the size of a small mountain, covered in vultures that greatly outnumbered the humans, dogs running amuck, a smell that seemed toxic, and women and children alongside the men picking through the heap. Even worse is that these families are not here to work as I presumed; they’re here for their survival.
The people picking through the garbage were here on their own accord. The littered mud squished beneath their goulashes as they searched for scraps of things that could be personally useful, dressed up to resell to the public, or even eaten if it looked like it would provide sustenance.
The eyes of a beautiful, little girl, dressed in jeans and a pink sweatshirt, met mine. The mud across her forehead made my heart sink and my eyes well up, which I quickly suppressed. She waited in line with the rest of her family to enjoy the hot meal and the cold juice from her plastic, worn, Minnie Mouse cup she brought along.
It was from that moment on that I pretty much remained silent due to my anger. Derik spoke to the group about the love of the Father with a local pastor as his translator. Grace, Katy, Rachel, Luke and I served the meal. To each person we passed a glass of juice to we said, “Dios te bendiga” (God bless you).
The ride home I choked back tears. Grace gently rubbed my back to give me some peace. Back at the church I fiercely revealed my questions of anger to our Squad Leader, Joey.
“I don’t understand! Why do they have to live like this and not me?
Why did God place me in Palm Beach, Florida, yet they have to pick their groceries from a garbage pile?
God has the power to rescue these people from this situation so why doesn’t He?
How ridiculous does it seem that we stroll in there telling them the Lord loves them when we cannot even begin to understand what that must be like to live that way?
The worst part is that I won’t even get an answer to these questions this side of heaven!”
Joey looked me in the eyes and said, “You’re right, Victoria. You probably won’t receive an answer to those, but that doesn’t mean they’re not important to ask.”
That sentence impacted me more than Joey probably knows. How often, do we as Christians, not ask tough, possibly unanswerable questions, because we’re afraid it might mean we don’t trust the Lord, or that others will think we aren’t “real Christians” due to our doubts?
I find this a lot in the teenagers I counsel at summer camp. So often they keep all these hard questions stuffed inside their hearts because they don’t want their parents to condemn them for “not having faith in the Lord”. I strongly sense, though, that this happens amongst adults more often than we care to admit as well.
The beauty of God is that we cannot come to full understanding of who He is, what His plans are, or how much He loves us. Our miniscule, human minds cannot wrap themselves around His infinite, boundless qualities. We can bring our thoughts, questions, and feelings to Him without restriction. Likewise, we can be a family of believers that brings hard, unanswerable questions to the table because they’re genuinely important to ask.
At the end of it all, while we may not have all the answers, Scripture tells us we do have the truth about who God is. God is faithful. God is our refuge. God gives strength to the weak. God’s love never fails.
And He has a plan and a purpose for every life He creates.
So bring on the questions, even those deemed “unanswerable”, because we have a Creator who can handle it all.
