There are sometimes days that I can’t remember why I came on the race. Then there are days like today when I can’t imagine where I would be without it.
As of late, I’ve been realizing how important it is for me take my Sabbath more seriously, using Saturday as my “play day” and staying home for rest on Sundays. That was my plan for today, but it wasn’t His.
Today my friend turned 27. We surprised her with balloons and pancakes and other goodies and then 3 of my other teammates and I met up with her and our other leaders to what we thought was only pizza and bowling.
When we first got to the mall, they were sharing coffee with a man and his wife, who we later found out were from Chile, and our leaders had just finished visiting and sharing the gospel with them. After leaving the couple, we went bowling where we met a family from Venezuela that we had the opportunity to pray over. For dinner, we walked around the block to get pizza, planning to take it back to the house and watch a movie. As we sat down to wait on our order, a little boy came up to us asking for money for food. This is something we’ve grown accustomed to since moving here. We agreed to give him a piece of pizza if he could sit and talk to us while we waited on it to come out. He let us pray for him, we gave him two pieces and he went on his way. After finishing what we could, we put the final two pieces in a box and headed back onto the street. On our way down the street, we stopped to talk to a man whose leg had been injured and because that kept him from being able to work, he lived and slept in the park. While some of us prayed over him, another man, soft spoken, noticed and asked if we had spare change for a coke. Two of the leaders went with him to get a drink and yogurt from the store across the street. All together again, we walked further down the street and saw a woman sitting on the corner with her baby. Again, this is a normal part of life around the city. We correctly assumed that she was selling candies. Her hands were hurt and she was hungry. We gave her the leftover of our pizza, prayed over her hands and then bought candy from her. It was getting chilly and really late, but our night was far from over.
One of the girls on my team remembered how much our birthday girl wanted to get up on a roof to see a view of the city. So began our search for a building with a generous security guard, ridiculous excuses and all. Finally finding “the one”, we went inside only to be rejected for a third time that night. Gut feelings told us to wait it out. We began making conversation with the vendors next door who happened to be Muslims. We talked about Jesus. They asked us how the world saw them. We had to look into the eyes of broken people and tell them how a broken world had a broken view of them. Those people were men of peace. Soon, a boy came whose dad worked in the building and agreed to take us up the next day. We were about to call a taxi. But then we remembered the ice cream man.
We walked across the street to a park where we had met a man weeks prior, who our friends had prayed over, to see if maybe he was there. We didn’t find him but we did find old abandoned carnival rides and were, if but only for a moment, like little kids again on that merry go round. We saw lights in the distance and headed toward them thinking that maybe it was more carnival things. Walking that way, we saw an exhibit set up. There were box-like towers set up with pictures on each of the 4 sides. Each side had a picture, the photographer’s name and home, and a caption – all in place to draw attention to the necessity of finding a solution for urban issues. There were pictures from all over the world. Heartbreaking photographs. All hanging there to stare you in the face with the brokenness of the earth. We were each stirred with all kinds of emotions as we walked from tower to tower. Some of the pictures were ripped and I went through one to stand inside the tower. It was white on all four sides as I was surrounded by the backs of the pictures. There were bottle caps on the ground and I picked one up and kept it. I couldn’t help but wonder if this is what we do. We turn the problems of the world inside out so that we do not have to look at them. I mean, the white is still ripped and we understand that the world needs a little fixing but we put ourselves in a small, limiting box and get really comfortable there looking at the rips in the white and trying to convince ourselves it isn’t really much worse than that.
The policeman said that people stopped to look and it made them think. The hot dog vender said the exhibit made him sad because no one ever looks at the pictures. Neither of them answered my question about how it made them feel.
I think there’s a lot to be a said for going outside the box. It puts you in a place of responsibility where you can no longer say that you didn’t know. Were we not made for so much more than simply being informed people?While looking a picture of Iraqi refugees, I heard Him say “Go.” I asked where. He said “go there, go anywhere. just don’t stay here.” It was heavy and my heart didn’t know what to do.
I walked up and down the strip thinking of our conversation with the Muslims from earlier and wondering that they saw when they looked at the pictures. I wondered if they felt the same kind of brokenness or a different kind, as if shattered hearts were something you could categorize.
Two girls came up to us. They both had on fun wigs of different colors. They did ask for money, but not before they latched on to us. A few of the people on our team took them to a food truck so they could have something to eat. Immediately one of the men working there began to be friendly with the girls, smiling and talking to them. Some of us got really bad vibes, others of us did not. The girls called him their friend; they said he was their only friend. The younger girl didn’t like him but the older one did. We fed them and then sat with them, waiting on the rest of our group to catch up. When the first two arrived, they immediately sat down with the owner of the food truck, the man who was being nice to our girls, not knowing who he was to us. They were closing everything up because it was really late. When I arrived, there was a seat open beside the youngest girl. She is from Esmeralda (a city on the coast), she loves studying English in school, and her absolute favorite food is lasagna. Two of the girls and I sat with them on the curb, their arms around our necks and their heads on our shoulders as we tried to warm them up. Their tight grips screamed that they were not the same as the boy who had asked us for food at the pizza place earlier. We chose to love and to hold both regardless of their difference.
Hours passed and we spoke with them the best that we could, trying to figure out where home was and how they were getting there. At one point, they got up to go to the bathroom. When each returned, we asked why she ran. She said she was scared of the bad people and that they were there all the time. They took the women and beat them. They stole the women and raped them. We asked if she had ever been taken and each said no, the word not giving us the kind of relief we might have hoped that it would. We held them tighter. We looked out from the street where we were sitting. 3 of us were loving these girls. 2 of us were ministering to the food truck owner and his employees. 2 of us were sitting across the parking lot praying.
7 of us were fighting for two little girls.
We danced with them under the street light and for a few hours, they got to be children. Whether they slept in a home or on the street, they left knowing about Someone who would be sleeping beside them no matter what. We replaced fear with hope if for only but a moment. We showed Jesus to our friends and to our enemies and we loved them the best way we could. The Lord blinded some of us to certain things and opened our eyes to others. That’s why the people who sat with the food truck man came out with a peace of redemption in him and those of us playing with the two girls left the scene unsettled about who he would be when we left. Some of us saw his sin and others saw his salvation. All of us saw the photography exhibit hours earlier. All of us were broken by it. Too broken to not fight for the girls. Too moved to get back inside our white walled tower and walk past choosing not to see them.
We brought them around the corner and bought them hot chocolate around 12:30 and then embraced them one last time as they sat on the curb again, but this time without us, stirring sugar into their cups. We made our way into a taxi, hearts heavy. A taxi full of quiet people. Hard fighters. Lovers. Interceders. Witnesses. Prayers. People.
It’s amazing to look at the story from the beginning in all of the times we could have stopped. Instead, we said yes to keep going. We said yes to feeding people. We said yes to loving people. We said yes to going to battle. One after another, we came face to face with broken people who came face to face with broken us. We gave away everything we could.
We lived those 8 hours for something bigger than ourselves. We celebrated a new year of life for a dear friend and fierce leader. We laughed and danced with each other and with people we had only just met. We shared our meals and our space and our hope. We felt all the things. We almost went home more than once.
We lived in the freedom we had. We lived for Him.
