Sometimes I wish that healings happened instantly every time. Sometimes I wish justice would rain down from heaven and God would restore peace to this earth the moment I start singing praises to His name. Sometime I wish the verse "the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and ALL flesh shall see it together" was always my conviction.
But then there's that ol' familiar friend: Pain.
We go Caldaritas, a poor Salvadorian villiage, once a week. It's an all day adventure that starts bright and early, riding in the back of a long flat-bed truck for hours on end. We pull up to a neighborhood that reminds you of guilt-triping infomercials, except you can't change the channel this time. The people there are vibrant, and from what I can tell, don't look at us as "the white missionaries from America". After a few short conversations, we all gather together under a no walled hut and begin to sing praises to God. My team and I try our best to speak in broken Spanish, and they are kind enough to smile while we stumble through it. When we finish, I feel as if God is staring back at me, showing me genuine worship.
God dances with us through the pain.
The People of Caldaritas
A few days later, we were taken into a school. The principal, who loves missionaries and Jesus, stopped school so we can speak to the students. The past couple times visiting, we took questions from the "question box". One question I received was (roughly translated) "Is it hard to leave your friends and family, go to another country, and just sleep anywhere?"
My automatic response is, "No, God is my strength (fill in more Christianese for desired effect)." While this answer is true, sometime I feel as if it is "too spiritual". It robs Christ of His flesh. It denies Him any real power because we'd prefer to skip over the pain of the cross, the pain of the beatings, the pain of poverty that Christ took on to identify with His people.
When I finished reading the question, I stare back into the eyes of the students. They were looking for answers. They were looking for honesty. They were looking for a God that is not above pain but looks at it and says, "I am. I can redeem this. I can make evil for good. This is tough, but I am tougher. TRUST ME."
After three seconds (seeming like three years) of staring at them, I gave them the best answer of honesty I have learned so far on the race:
"Yes, it is hard… but it's worth it."
