It's about that time.
Adios, mis hermanos. iTe queremos mucho!
Well, Honduras is coming to an abrupt end as we have arrived to our Thailand debrief in Valle de Anjeles, Honduras, where the lovely M Squad is back together to rest and reconnect after a crazy good month of ministry. I wish my words were more elaborate as to more adeptly describe the powerful display of God's moving in this country these past four weeks. I will say that it has been incredible, simply incredible.
But Abby, what did you all do, exactly?
We worked, loved on and formed relationships with the boys at Zion's Gate, taught in a grade school, helped to construct a talapia farm (fish farm) which will support an orphanage/ home for women, ministered in the city dump, and lastly but not least, visited a ministry for young women called Heart of Christ. The girls at HOC range from 11-21 years of age, all being victims of rape or violence, all of whom have had children as a result of such acts.
In every situation we were presented with opportunities to love on the people put in front of us; sometimes in tangible ways, sometimes emotional, but always spiritual. We may not realize it, coming from a society and a generation that is so engrossed with the idea of community, identity and comfort in love, but it can be quite the rarity.
Imagine That.
The fact of reality is this: that we kids will not always have the words. We will not necessarily be equipped with the capacity to understand someone's walk who has lived in abject poverty. We may not be able to relate on every level, or even speak their same language; however, loving with sincerity and without bias is universal and can bridge a multitude of seemingly insurmountable expanses.
Tactual representations of Christ, the very identity of God: simply love. Not purely emotion, not lacking justice, not making excuses, not as merely words and not as a cheap regurgitation of what the world defines love as, but how God loves His people.
Christ does so with a holy, unquenchable, consuming fire; with a passion and a force most unstoppable. We drowned in an ocean of grace as our hearts broke for the things His heart breaks for this month.
More powerful than any firearm,
more consuming than any blaze.
We fight for restoration. We fight for wholeness. We fight for life, against brokenness of the heart and spiritual oppression. We fight for the ability to thrive not merely existing. We fight for wisdom. We fight for true love, justice and perspective to be known and fleshed out.
”For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
Ephesians 6:12.
So let us now run boldly in this Truth:
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
1 John 4:9-11
We rise to greet this next month in Thailand with the expectation that Jesus will work in us and through us to communicate the gospel, which is the mightiest love story and our very God as crowned author.
