The past couple of days I’ve been thinking a lot about love. Outside the family, I feel like I don’t know the first thing about how to really love other people. I know how to smile and be nice, but how do I go deeper than that with a stranger? Fortunately, the tire blow out yesterday wasn’t too far away from the Basurero (essentially, a trash city….the landfill). As I walked there, I looked around at the scenery, the trees, the trash along the side of the road, etc. God repeatedly said to me,
“I’m going to show you the people I love.”
God was preparing to show me something important.
Along the road I noticed this kindo f tree that had bright yellow flowers in bloom. They really stood out amongst all the green and trash. I hated to take my eyes off it. I think I’ve discovered my favorite flower–simple, and bright yellow. When I saw those flowers, God said to me,
“See, in the middle of all this filth, I have beauty.”
Okay. That’s all I could say in response. I didn’t know what to expect.
I walked the road into the basurero. At first I’d see piles of trash along the sides…then there would be more trash. Bottles. Glass. Clothes. Diaper. A side of meat that was covered with a swarm of flies. The smell–unavoidable. More and more flies and a lot of bees became attracted to us. Shoes became sticky as we walked in mud–and I have absolutely no doubt about this–feces. Stuffed trash bags. Paper. Toys. It was ALL there. As we walked further, we came up to some shacks built right there next to the landfull. That’s right–people’s HOMES. Kids and their parents eat, sleep, live and breathe in that landfull. I don’t know how, but God gave me the charage to keep going and pressing in further.
We handed PB&J sandwiches to as many people as would receive them from a big group of “gringos”. I’m sure we looked like a spectacle looking at a spectacle. So much darkness and heaviness in one place; the “devil’s playground” as Megan called it. Some people got sick, some handed out ffood, some attampted coversations in Spanish, soe froze, some got frustrated, some were overwheled, some prayed, some charged ahead.
As a group of us prayed for a family, God said to me over and over,
“They are beautiful, they are so beautiful.”
Instead of me being light to the basurero people, they became light to me. It didn’t matter what they wore, if they wore makeup, if they had nice things, if their teeth were perfectly straight and bleached white–they were absolutely beautiful because they were created by God in His image.
God loved them as they were–their being, not their doing.
I’m still processing all of ths as I look at one of the yellow flowers I picked off a tree. But I challenge you to evaluate how you love. Where is the “basurero” of your own town? Will you go there–even if all you can do is smile and look eye-to-eye with the people? To them, that may be the very LOVE they need to know.
