Oh goodness… for a girl who is as graceful as I am when it comes to walking, Guatemala is a dangerously captivating country. The streets here are mostly made up of cobblestone and are one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen. However, along with their beauty, they are also highly trippy… and not in the “way cool,” “far out,” sense of trippy. More like the “you barely stubbed your small toe on a jutted out rock and somehow now find yourself on your face” trippy.
Amidst walking and blundering through the uneven, somewhat “smoothed over” jutted rocks, trying to keep pace with everyone, looking down at your feet is an absolute must.
I’m so glad I looked down and truly observed the beauty of these streets.
These stones are intricately crafted by a maker. Designed by choice, they lay side by side, each a bit different: different cut, different color, different thickness, different smoothness. Together they pave the way for busy businessmen, for indigenous fruit and cloth sellers and for visitors like myself. However, these stones can’t make the road by just being uneven stones – no, something stronger has to be poured in to them to connect them and bond them together; filling in the empty crevices and evening out the top. Without this substance, these stones would be easy to move, easy to pull a part, easy to break. To repair a part of these roads, it takes hard, manual labor by pick-axe and two hands…no machines, just one singular person swinging away until that spot is more perfect than before.
This month was all squad month and the more I witnessed our squad, the more I saw that we are these chaotic cobblestones. From all different backgrounds, here we are – serving, laying down our lives to pave the way to the Kingdom for people that we meet on our journey and people back home. Without Christ: we shouldn’t work. Without Christ pouring into us daily, filling our spirits with His fruits, evening our tempers with His mercy and grace, we don’t work. Without Christ, we would be so quickly torn apart and broken. Instead, here we are, fitting perfectly together solely by the connection of Christ. Praise God for having Christ as our bond – the only perfect bond that can hold such imperfect people together and allow them to work as a family such as C-Squad. We were designed by choice – each a little different but together, living and loving in community with one another and with the Father, getting to pave an uneven, messy street to the foot of our King. We aren’t made more perfect by the delights of this world or by anything easy but instead by the one Father precisely refining each of us to make us more perfect than before.
Ephesians 2:20 Together, we are his house
built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.
And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself.
21 We are carefully joined together in him,
becoming a holy temple for the Lord.
