Last week, I went on a mission trip to Costa Rica. This trip was not apart of my World Race trip coming up (2 weeks!!) but I thought I would share anyways…. sorry to potentially disappoint.
This week in Costa Rica was a lot, a lot of seeing the world in a new way, a lot of making new friends that are on fire for the Lord all over, and a lot of new lessons from the Lord also.
We worked with an organization called Face of Justice, (look them up, I promise it is worth it). One of their projects is street ministry, where they go out twice a week and make friends and just engage in conversations with prostitutes and the homeless. Their relationships with these people was amazing, they were well known and the Lord was clearly using them. Once every few weeks, they also do a prayer vigil across the street from the largest brothel in Central America. They make friends, and pray for the people going in and coming out of this brothel and simply for it to shut down. We got to partake in a prayer vigil last week.
It was easy and clear to see the brokenness and longing desire for something more from the prostitutes working and my heart simply broke for them. They have lost a sense of worth and identity entirely and it was just so evident.
Then on the other hand, the men. The men that travel to another country for the sole cause of going to this brothel. Initially, I had absolutely zero compassion for them. Even in conversations with them, I will filled with anger and disgust more than I have ever felt. I truly didn’t know I was capable of some emotions that I felt in this moment.
But of course, the Lord spoke and put my heart back in the right place. Their brokenness and lost, distorted sense of worth and identity was not as apparent as the others. But it was there, so deeply. They were there because they long to feel anything to give them worth. They have become so lost that they see this as the only way. Then I felt a sense of compassion for these people, for all people, for myself. I am just as broken as the next person, and I am foolish to think otherwise in the moment that I was filled with anger.
We are all deeply, deeply broken. We are all in need, in need of a perfect Savior to come and mend us back together. I daily need Jesus to come and mend my broken pieces, pick me up when I fall, and remind me of my identity.
I see people differently now. I no longer feel anger, yet a compassion in knowing the root of all humanly sin.
We are all the broken. We are all the misfits. We are all in need.
Praise Jesus that He came and filled these needs with Himself and we no longer have to search the world to find it.
