Love. It’s a word that is so often overused and misunderstood. People love their clothes, cars, food, favorite sports teams, movies, music. We love money and places and pets.
But do we love people? Do I love people? I mean really love them?
God put that question in front of me last night, and it wasn’t as easy to answer as I thought.
You see, last night was our last night working with Pan & Chocolate, a ministry at a large church here in San Salvador, El Salvador. Three times a week, they load up trucks and cars and buses and head out to different spots around the city to hand out bread and coffee to people living on the streets. We have gone with them several times, and the particular place that we have gone to the most is an intersection downtown, filled with plastic wrappers and bottles, leftover food, piles of garbage, and people. Adults and children are waiting there for us, expectantly, with their beds consisting of just a blanket thrown on the concrete sidewalk claiming their spot for the night just a few feet away.
The first night we drove up, we saw kids run from the piles of trash they were rummaging in towards us, knowing they would get a better meal that night from us than from the trash. I went over and joined the group working with the kids (they have a special section marked off just for kids to be sure that they always get something), and I watched as a group from the church shared a Bible story with them, sang a couple songs, and then I helped as they began handing out the food and drinks to them.
At one point, one of the security guards (there are quite a few, as this is not the safest place in town), pulled me back as a boy dressed in five layers of oversized clothes who looked to be about 13 years old stumbled into the group. The guard motioned to me that this boy was high and to be careful around him. I took one look at this boy, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him for the rest of the night. He was clearly high. His eyes were glazed over, and his hands shook randomly. He didn’t seem to be able to keep his bearings or know exactly where he was at. He had a small juice bottle in his hand that I found out was not filled with juice. I realized as he kept bringing it up to his mouth and nose that it was filled with glue, and he was sniffing the fumes to numb his senses and his brain and the pain he was dealing with. We were only allowed to be there for about 15 minutes because the church didn’t want things to get too dangerous, but as we were being rushed out to leave, I found out the boy’s name was Emerson, and I prayed with him quickly.
We were disappointed that we didn’t get to spend more time with the people there, so we asked to have more time with them. So the next week when we went back, we went through the same routine, but this time, the church let us stay longer and actually sit down and talk with the people there. I found Emerson again and sat down with him for about a half an hour. I listened as he told me that he was actually 16 and about his family and how he wanted to visit the United States. His eyes were glazed over again, and I could smell the glue fumes as he brought the bottle to his face every minute or two. But I could also see a gentleness in his eyes and a peaceful spirit. As other kids were running around with knives and threatening other kids with them, Emerson would just walk away, not wanting to be involved in their fighting and threats. As we got ready to leave, he walked me and every other girl with us to the truck and made sure we got in safely.
When we went back last night, I walked up to the kids’ group, and my eyes scanned the line of children looking for Emerson. I saw him sitting at the end, and when our eyes met, immediately his face lit up in a huge smile, and he waved for me to come over and sit with him. I walked over and sat beside him and spent the rest of the time with him listening as he told me the same stories, with the same glazed look in his eyes, and the same glue fumes hitting my nostrils every minute or two. He couldn’t believe it when I told him that I remembered some of the things that he had told me before, and when I asked him for a hug when we left, he was shocked. As we drove away last night, my heart was hurting, knowing that I will probably never see Emerson again, never get another chance to show him love, to show him that there is a Father that loves him more than he can every realize, who can heal his pain so that he doesn’t have to numb it with glue fumes.
After we left, we met up with one of the pastors at the church, and he thanked us for our ministry with them this month. He told us how much we had impacted them and shown them what it meant to really love people like God does. He said that he was blown away the first time we went with them, and we sat down with the people and talked to them and looked them in the eyes and prayed for them. He couldn’t believe that we actually put our hands on them to pray or gave them hugs. He said that they had never done that before; usually, they just go hand the food to people and leave.
When he said that I was sad and convicted at the same time. Sad for all the opportunities this church had missed to really love people, and convicted that so often I do the same thing. This ministry is doing what God tells us to-giving food to the hungry. But something has been missing. Please don’t misunderstand me–I don’t want to make this church sound bad in any way–they are doing a lot of great things, and they obviously have a heart to help needy people, as shown by this ministry. But they forgot something that I think all of us, myself included, forget a lot of times.
Love.
Love is selfless. Love is preferring someone else about yourself. Love is sitting in trash and urine so that you can pray with the kid who calls that home. Love is giving a hug to the homeless man who smells and is covered in dirt. Love has no conditions, no exceptions. Love is up close and personal. It’s hard to really love someone when you keep them at a distance. Sure, sometimes it’s going to be hard or uncomfortable or even dangerous. But God doesn’t ask us to live an easy life or to be comfortable or safe.
He just asks us to love.
We’re fighting a battle, a spiritual battle, and over the last few months, I’ve seen a lot of the battlefields-the street children, the dump workers, the drug addicts, the poverty and pain and suffering that’s in the world. God has been teaching me so much about how to fight those battles, that He is greater than any of those things, and He has given us power and authority to fight against those things.
But last night, He taught me that the greatest weapon we have is love. Nothing can defeat that. We just have to be willing to get over ourselves, get out of our comfort zones, and see people the way God sees them, through His eyes–eyes of love.
“If I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing…Love never fails.“
1 Corinthians 13:2,3,8
