“If anyone has material
possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how
can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with
words or speech but with actions and in truth. This is how we know that we
belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence …” (1 John
3:17-19, NIV)
The dust
blows and twists about as you stand on this rutted dirt road and no matter
which direction you turn, it stings the eyes. The first smells you sense seem
both sweet and nauseating at the same time. As you take a deeper breath,
something more sinister pushes violently against your lungs as they desire
better air. Slowly your mind recognizes the repulsive smells of accumulating,
lingering and burning refuse in massive amounts.
As you gaze
first in one direction and then in another, all you see are people working
midst piles of organized and separated reclaimed trash. There are piles of
plastic, piles of clothing and cloth, piles of aluminum and metal and piles of
unrecognizable stuff. Then you notice trucks of every shape and size bringing more
and more to this overflowing place of the discarded and reclaimed. Huge new
trucks overloaded with waste of every kind. There are sewage trucks and
open-backed trucks, covered trucks and compacting trucks, shining trucks and
dirty trucks; all delivering more or driving away to gather more. Then there
are the tucks of poor, smaller broken down and battered beyond description
moving the reclaimed and recyclable trash to buyers. There will be no new
trucks for these purveyors of gathering and selling; only more loads to eke out
enough money to buy some beans and rice for their family.
Then there
is the endless parade of people. There are people laboring under bags ten times
their size and people barely able to walk. In every direction people are
moving, weaving and crossing the road, going somewhere. Men and women going to
the dump to work for twelve hours or so, to rummage and claim enough stuff to
put together a dollar’s worth for their efforts. People with families, women
with babies, men maimed by the busyness of the trucks, children dressed for
school and children hardly dressed with ragged shirts and tattered over-sized
or undersized shoes. Finally along the edges of the broken down shacks are the
addicted men, who have rummaged through the garbage to find bottles of liquor
to drain the last ounces or cans of glue and solvents trying to stay high as if
to rise above the squalor of this place. This place is the Guatemala City dump
and it is one of the largest dumps in the world.
Yet here in
this place of the dirt, filth, cast-offs and hopelessness; smiles persist on
the faces of the children and great charity is seem in the efforts of churches,
leaders and projects of various kinds and functions. Those humans that offer up
their energy, heart and time … seem like angels among the rest of us but the
fact remains; they are humans who give more than the rest of us.
Behind a
huge wall of nondescript fading aqua colored building is a small church with
saintly pastor. A pastor who not only cares for the spiritual needs of the
people she shepherds and guides but a pastor who feeds the poor because her
Savior asks her to love as He loves. Her eyes glint with the loving compassion
that her Lord had for the people sitting on a hillside when he sent the loaves
and the fishes around to feed the multitude. The genuine Christian empathy and
faith of substance that enables this small demure woman to feed the hundreds of
children who come to side of the church each and every day is completely
daunting to consider and comprehend. Still there are no cultural or societal
awards for this kind of work and sadly there are few outside of this place that
even know of her or of her monumental ministry of hope in a hopeless place. Yet
as peered into the faces of a few of the hundreds that gather each day to eat,
most likely their only meal of the day; I knew I was seeing what faith in a
loving God looks like when it is flows out in true love and grace.
In my life …
I have met countless pastors and sat in the audience of great spiritual
teachers and leaders but I have not been in the presence of anyone so humbly
and authentically real in word and deed in their faith. This is real faith, not
for a dedicated moment of emotion; but real to feed the spiritually and
physically hungry … meal after meal and day after day. This is real faith; not
for accolades or reward but simply because she knows Jesus Christ as her Lord
and she loves Him. The children in this awful place cannot keep from running
with great big smiles to her to hug her. Their endless expressions of gratitude
are what the “Gospel” brings when it is truly lived out. I know somewhere else,
a place completely the opposite of this place of want, struggle, tears and
pain; there is a Savior who is also smiling as He watches this woman who loving
serves Him. This Risen Christ is smiling; because faithful servant is living
out “Good News,” He wants the world to see and find.
May the Lord richly bless you my
friend, Pastor Mercedez for all that you do. I know the Lord is well pleased.
