It's June. Wow. We have been here almost a straight six months. I left my job in Texas over a year ago. Over this time, I've learned a lot. Admittedly, I've neglected publishing my lessons learned to the world, because sometimes the lessons seem to big to capture in times new roman size 12, but mostly, because I don't feel like I have finished learning any of them. But this morning, I read something my mother, a thinker and writer-in-hiding like me, had written. It was beautiful, and I encouraged her to share it with the world. Because God doesn't teach us lessons so that we can put them in a book on the shelf.
Honduras is Honduras. The more you get to know her, the more you want to love her and strangle her at the same time. The poverty is overwhelming. The joy of the children is contagious. The perseverance of the single mother with no job and a half dozen mouths to feed will expose your weakness. The violence is heart-wrenching painful. And the faith of the people, the faith of so many mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and young children is simply extraordinary.
Everyday we witness the need all around us. It's painful and it's devastating. However, what will crush you is when you see the need is even more desperate in yourself. When you realize that there is a great poverty in your own life and your own heart.
But the jar he was making from the clay became flawed in the potter's hand, so he made it into another jar, as it seemed right for him to do. -Jeremiah 18:4
And in that is our hope. That our Lord loves us. He teaches us, molds us and sometimes completely remakes us. But our God is good. He loves like a hurricane, but sometimes we need to be destroyed. For the creature he molds with his own loving hands is blameless, beautiful, and breathtaking.
Honduras is Honduras. But the work God is doing in me is remarkable.
