Meeting God in a Guatemalan Bathroom
“I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart, and wait for the Lord.”
Psalm 27:13-14
Last week, Pastor Kurt challenged us to look at a particular name of God used in the Bible, Ha Makom, which means “The Place”. When God comes to a location, it becomes THE place because God is there and His presence changes everything.
Our world certainly finds itself in a new place. We each find ourselves in a new place and we may be wondering, where is God in this place? As a staff, we have been participating in these daily devotionals – an opportunity to share a little of our place, our story. Today I would like to share with you a little of mine.
In 2006 my husband, Daniel, and I felt a strong calling to commit two years of our lives to living and serving at the New Life Children’s Home in Guatemala. This was a really big deal for us, especially for me because I don’t particularly like big changes, uncertainty, things that are new, and I’m not exactly what you’d call adventurous. The most adventurous ride I go on when visiting Six Flags is the scenic train! So to sell my car, box up all of our possessions, and move to a new country – while exciting – was also pretty scary, too.
I vividly remember getting off of the airplane in the Guatemala City airport and joining a sea of people trying to collect our baggage and exit the airport. The signs and language that I didn’t yet understand as people were talking and shouting around me, felt so disorienting and chaotic.
I remember being driven to the children’s home and I knew I wasn’t going to the safest of areas – my husband and I had been there before with a team, but I felt so much more alone and vulnerable with just Daniel with me this time. I watched with wide eyes as a guard with an automatic weapon draped over his shoulder guarded a Coca-Cola truck and another stood outside a bank that we passed. We encountered a blocked road on the drive and had to turn around. The only comment from our driver was – oh there must have been a murder, that’s too bad. My pulse rate increased as the reality was hitting me that this was now my home. We pulled into the children’s home which has high walls surrounding it, electric razor wire at the top, and an armed guard at the gate.
That night I was having trouble sleeping. I heard gunfire and just felt so alone wondering what on earth we had gotten ourselves into! Our familiar culture, language, and perceived safety had all been stripped away in just one night. And then, Daniel and I both got sick … very sick, a few days after our arrival from water that had not been properly filtered. I actually didn’t know my body contained that much fluid until it kept coming out of me. At one point, I felt so weak that I was just laying on the bathroom floor. As you might know, all kinds of fears creep in when you are that kind of sick and just feel alone in the night. My sweet husband covered me with the prayer quilt that our home church had made for us before we left. If you have ever made a prayer quilt or received one, you know these are powerful! That physical representation of prayer and community draped over me was an indescribable comfort. God met me there and filled me with peace, hope, and gratitude for His presence.
Would I have thought that Ha Makom, THE PLACE for God, would have been the floor of a Guatemalan bathroom? No. It was not a place I particularly wanted to be. I would have really liked to skip that part but God met me there. There is nothing that strips us quite like illness, revealing our great vulnerability and that our lives lie completely in God’s hands.
Vulnerability is a curious thing. We resist it, don’t like it, and yet there is actually a raw kind of beauty that is present in vulnerability. We are currently in the season of Lent. It seems like ages ago that we gathered as a church family in the Sanctuary on February 26th for Ash Wednesday. That night, I had a unique vantage point as I sat off to the side of the choir loft. I was deeply moved as I watched the lines of people coming forward, the posture of humility in kneeling at the altar, faces of all ages and backgrounds looking up with great vulnerability at the pastor as they received the sign of the cross in ashes on their forehead. There was a strange and stirring beauty about it all – so many unique and beautiful faces, the same vulnerability and humility as the words were spoken “From dust you have come to dust you will return, repent and believe the Gospel.”
Everything about this pandemic and this time is odd and it is somehow oddly fitting that it is occurring during Lent. Lent is traditionally a time of stripping things away. When the season began and you might have been asked “What are you giving up for Lent this year?”, I doubt any of you responded by saying this year I will be giving up toilet paper, or milk, or going to any kind of a store or restaurant. We sure didn’t see this coming.
There is certainly immense suffering in our world right now. So much has been stripped away. In the midst though, there is always good. To say this is not meant to make light of the suffering and pain, it just acknowledges the truth of the juxtaposition in the presence of good too. We can’t focus only on the bad. We weren’t meant to. May our eyes be opened to the good and may we pause to take notice.
While in those early days in Guatemala, I was sure thankful for a bathroom, for medicine to get rid of parasites, for that prayer quilt, and for a kind missionary who brought me jello and salted cubed potatoes when I could eat again and nothing has ever tasted better in my life!
All of us parents found out yesterday that schools will remain closed until at least May 1st. That’s a loooong time. It feels hard and daunting but there are still moments of immense good. I’ve heard people talking about the guilt they feel that while there is so much hurting and suffering taking place in the world, there are some parts of this strange time that they are thankful for: the slower pace, not watching the clock to have to get to the next thing, not running from one activity to the next, unrushed meals and conversations, finally sitting together around the table, games and bike rides, long walks, and phone calls to catch up and check in, being reminded of what really matters.
May we never forget that God is present in the hard – and not just present but transforming it with His presence. May we look for Him and for the small blessings of God’s grace that are always present in the hard. May our eyes be opened and our hearts overflowing with true gratitude as we see God transforming our place.
My questions for all of us today are:
- Where have you noticed God at work in your place?
- What small blessings have you encountered today?
- Is there something keeping you from noticing and if so, what will it take to get your attention?
I pray that this time will be a gift for all of us, a time when we lean more closely on God and one another. May we not have to experience the sickness of the virus to truly be stopped and stripped of everything except the reality of God’s presence.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, you are in our midst and you are at work in the world. We pray for those who right now are suffering, scared, and hurting. May they experience a special measure of your presence, peace, and comfort. Thank you for the good that is always present because of You. May we stop and pay attention, listening for your voice. Thank you for filling our place to overflowing. Amen.
“If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, and beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to be born both within ourselves and within the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength. The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it.”
― Frederick Buechner
