Truthfully, I’ve never been the most observant person in the room, like ever. Over the past few years I’ve become a more observant person, but still. There are times, like when I’m surrounded by sweet children, or hiking with my friends, that I’ll be the one to spot the child who just seems a little bit off, carrying a little more sadness in their heart, who needs just a little extra love; I’ll be the one to spot the little bird in the tree, the butterfly flittering by, or one little flower that is so beautiful but so often overlooked.
Since we’ve been in Bogotá, I’ve realized I spend a lot of time looking at my feet.
When I walk, I look at my feet to make sure I don’t fall, because we all know I trip over anything and everything, including the air. When I walk places, I’m by a friend, were talking, I’m glancing up, and mostly looking at the path I’m walking on, because I feel safe. I don’t feel a need to look up at people because I have someone right next to me to have a conversation with. But we are not here to walk around with our eyes on the ground, we’re here to look up at the people, see their faces, their eyes, their pain and their joy. Last week when we were walking through the bus station my eyes were down, like usual, but when we turned a corner on the ground I saw a man begging for money. He had no left arm, his clothes were torn, he looked like he could use a shower and a hot meal; but the thing my eyes were immediately drawn to was his stomach. This man had a huge mass coming out of his stomach under his ribs, like one of his organs wasn’t where it was supposed to be. I immediately felt sick to my stomach, so upset that this man was needing to beg for help, that no one was stopping, and you know what I did? Absolutely nothing. I was too afraid to stop the group and say, we need to pray for this man, too afraid to step way out of my comfort zone and actually pray for him, too afraid that if I did pray for him, nothing would happen. So I just kept walking, said a prayer in my head, and thought, next time I’ll stop.
I think in that moment I was choosing to be blind to the person Abba was trying to bring me to. I know now that He was trying to tell me that even if I don’t look up, He’s going to remind why I need to look, even if that means bringing people to my feet. Yesterday when we were walking back to the bottom of the mountain of Formavida, the hill of the forgotten people, I decided to look up. I was a little nervous I was going trip, but I didn’t; and besides, if I would have, what’s a scraped elbow compared to seeing Abba’s creation, His masterpiece of people walking by me, and the beautiful hill I was walking towards. We aren’t here to be tourists, to look at our feet, self-centered, timid, afraid, or any other verb you can think of to explain why we don’t step out in faith and do the things we should do; we aren’t even here to ‘be a world racer’. We are here to bring Kingdom, to chase down the ones who need my sweet Father’s love, to be missionaries, we are here to look up. Because when we do, He shows us the things we never thought would mean what they do now.
“I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; From where shall my help come?” Psalm 121:1
Love ya’ll mucho,
Mack
