Inspired by Matt Snyder’s blog (if you’re not already reading his blogs, please begin soon!) and an aching in my heart, I need to confess something to you. The lovely people at Bethany Baptist have already heard this, but they were the first. And that’s not enough. The hard thing about Christianity is that sometimes people either look at Christians and see people professing one thing and living another (but we all fall and all need Jesus’ grace) or they think that they could never be that “good”. We may be going on an 11-month mission trip, but we’re still just as depraved and crooked as anyone else. We’re are God’s and we are a new creation, but old mindsets and sin still constantly attack.
So, here’s how I said “no” to Jesus in Mexico:
My friend, Alex, had told me about a hiking excursion she was going to go on. She didn’t have much information, but she knew that the kids going were leaving fairly early in the morning (3 am!) and that the hill was about four hours away, in Guanajuato. We’d hike a hill with some kids from our university there. So, at 10 pm on the night before, we decided to go!
It turns out that what we were actually taking part in was the Cubilete, an annual Catholic pilgrimage of sorts, in which thousands of youth from all over Mexico come to Guanajuato and walk 17 kilometers up a mountain. A mass is held at the top, under a Jesus with his arms held wide open. (One boy, Alejandro, very sweetly said to us, “That’s how Jesus always is. With his arms wide open, waiting for us to run into them.”) 
Along the way, to pass the time and keep minds from burning muscles and sweat, the groups from all over screamed out cheers. One was, “Quien es el mero mero?” (basically, “Who’s number one?”). Then other kids would holler back “Dios es el mero mero” (“God’s number one!” or “God’s the best!”). So, I was swept up in this feeling of being jazzed about God. How cool that all these kids are doing this, I thought.
And then we passed by a blind man, holding out a hat for money. Everyone parted around him like water in a stream around a boulder. No pesos were placed in his hat, no hands were placed on him in prayer. As I myself walked past him, I looked back. No one was doing anything for this man. [I would later read Shane Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution and be struck by the truth in his statement that we can admire what Jesus did without doing it ourselves.”]
How I wish I could say I stopped, that I begged others to stop with me and pray. I wish I could excuse my not stopping, saying that my Spanish wasn’t good enough to find my group again or that I was unable to stop amid the throngs of people. But I have no excuse. I’ve thought of that man many times since then. If we had each given him one peso, or one person had been willing to not eat so that he could, or if we had all stopped and laid hands on him and prayed, or even talked to him and found out his story… how might we have made a difference in his life? How might God have been able to move in this man’s life that day?
In Matthew 25:45, Jesus says, “”He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.‘ ” Hebrews 13:2 also reminds us that we should “not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”
I wonder if I turned down an angel that day. But no question, I didn’t pray for Jesus or provide for Him when I should have. This is a big impetus for me on the Race and in daily life. I don’t want to walk by anyone ever again without seeing Jesus in them. I don’t want to turn down God, simply because it wasn’t convenient, I was scared or because no one else was.
I never again want to say “no” to Jesus.
