“I’m not negative,” I try to convince people, “I’m a realist.”
So it goes, the mellow dramatics of my life. If you’re anything like me, you know exactly where I’m coming from on this issue. And if you’re not like me, and insist on seeing that stupid silver lining, well God bless you and all the more power to ya. Honduras was a month where my team and I had to find new ministry contacts for The World Race to partner with to send potential future Racers to, a big part of that was to find places that were willing to house 7 gringos plus their 50-70 liter packs and with a lodging budget of $5.00 per person, per day.
Yeah, right.
So imagine my surprise when we ran into a fellow missionary, Gracie Murphree, who opened up her ministry doors and lodged our team of 7 extra Racers including the 6 that were already staying there. Imagine my shock when Gracie introduced us to John Meticka, the president of Honduran Fellowship, an organization that links together all the missionaries and ministries in Honduras. Imagine my absolute bewilderment when John gave us contact information to Jorge Pinto, a mega church Pastor in Honduras who connected us to another pastor who connected us to another pastor, all who were willing to house us for a few days.
That’s the thing about community, it links together people who are willing to lay aside their agendas and judgements and help the greater good, to help their fellow man and woman. So often I fear that we as a society are so keen to looking at things with a negative eye, and why shouldn’t we be? When police brutality and wife beating sports stars are making the news, seeing the good in people can be a struggle.
Well, this realist is learning to see the positives a little better. These positives are gems underneath heaping piles of trash, but when you can pull them out, they shine brilliantly and the garbage pile next to you doesn’t seem to smell so bad. It’s all about choice, and choosing to see the positives when all else seems lost, when nothing seems to be going right, seeing the good when all seems to be going bad can radically alter the course of how you see people, situations and ultimatly, this crazy jacked p world that we live in.
I’m amazed by the doors The Lord opened up to my team and I last month. People who were not only willing to let us stay in their homes in churches, but they also provided us a means of transportation, prepared food for us, and put us in air conditionined rooms that we could lie in as the San Pedro Sula humidity took over every sweat pore in our body. When I look back at last month, I see a month where The Lord answered prayers before we even bothered to pray, and why would He do that?
I keep going back to the same answer, He’s a good good Father He knows and sees our needs even before we started to ask, before we even started to wonder. He knows us, inside and out and puts people and passions and stories in our lives for a reason and for a season. I am humbled by the way our team was taken care of last month because it’s a direct reminder of how the Father takes care of us, faithfully and willingly.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a little silver on every cloud.
On to the next locatioon-
M
