SUMPANGO GUATEMALA TRIP REPORT Day #2

This morning Oscar and I visited the small village of El Yalu. It's a very poor village of approximately 2000 people. About 500 of those are children who are severely malnourished. Some years ago Los Olivos decided to start a church in the village. They bought two small parcels of land that the church was hoping to build a small church building. God had other things in mind. About 4 years ago a non-profit ministry called Mano con Mano (Hand-In-Hand) began a feeding program for the children. The leaders of the ministry wanted to identify with a local church and heard about Los Olivos, met Oscar and invited them to partner.

Every other day each week the center feeds some 240-280 children, sponsors an after-school resource center and also doubles as a sanctuary for the church on Sundays. Oscar

introduced me to Lorenzo and Dr. Ephraim as well as several other leaders in the church. The entire operation is an example of micro enterprise at it's best! They have managed to start a medical clinic, as well as several small businesses. One of these is producing stoves for each home. The stoves are made of reinforced concrete and efficiently utilize about one-third of the wood of an open fire thus reducing deforestation. They vent the smoke using a simple smokestack which reduces respiratory illnesses while conserving heart to warm their homes. Another group was working diligently to produce brightly colored toilets. They have already placed 1000 toilets in homes in this village and plans are in place to provide another 500. Each weekend Los Olivos commissions 7-8 people who travel washed out roads to serve this simple rural village and its people. It's a terrific example of people proclaiming the love of Christ through their deeds.

It's almost 4pm and Quique and I are getting ready to go over to the church for the first training session. I haven't even met yet with the leaders, but what I've seen thus far is enough impress.

We appreciate your prayers.

S t r e t c h e d

SUMPANGO GUATEMALA TRIP REPORT Day #1

I wrestled my groggy body out of the bed at 3am, showered, grabbed a bite to eat and dashed off to Mitchell Field to catch a 6am flight to Guatemela City. The flight went well until final approach into Guatemala City when the plane slammed violently down onto the tarmac. Even the flight attendant sitting in front of me had a panic-stricken look on her face. Hers wasn't the only furrowed brow or anxious expression.

I grabbed ny belongings, cleared customs and headed outside where my friend Enrique Fernandez was waiting for my arrival. We headed toward the city stopping only for a bite to eat before making our way to Sumpango. I had forgotten how much I loved the city of Sumpango. It's nestled among the foothills about 42 km east of Guatemala City. You actually can see several volcanos (one of them active) from the streets. Cobblestone streets are lined with tiny brightly painted tiendas. The sight of fresh vegetables and the aroma of street vendors wafts through the air. I was tempted more than once to sample the fresh salsa at several but resisted.

I've been told that every city in Guatemala has it's patron saint. Sumpango is no exception, for the city still bears witness to the festivals and celebrations that occurred just last week to commemorate and honor her beloved saint--Augustine. No wonder I have a fondness for the city--she and I share a common affection--Augustine of Hippo.

It is here in this city that the Chaquito family has resided for years. Humble, hard-working people--Jose, Alejandra, Armando, Oscar and Karla. They are some of the sweetest most hospitable people I've met anywhere in the world. All of them are knee-deep in their commitment to their local church Los Olivos, a church affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church of America. Tomorrow afternoon Enrique and I will begin equipping and interacting with their leaders.

It's good to be here. Thanks for your prayers for us.

Choices

I’ve been thinking about the power of my choices. Everyday I am afforded opportunities to make any number of choices: what I think about, what memories I dwell on, how I speak or don’t speak, how I help others, how I respond to humiliating events, what I do with my time, etc. etc. You can take away every freedom a person possesses except for the last freedom—the freedom to choose how one responds in any given set of circumstances. My everyday choices are rarely, if ever, neutral. The decisions I make and the choices I exercise affect others and me in positive or negative ways. C.S. Lewis once said that our choices turn us one of two ways: either into a Heaven creature that is in harmony with God resulting in freedom, joy and peace, or a hellish creature who lives in a state of war and hatred with God resulting in loneliness, horror and tyranny. My everyday choices move me toward one state or the other.

The power of my choices. Wow! Go and make good ones today!

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Whose My Enemy?

Several days ago I floated this question on my FB page, “Have you ever wondered why ‘a man after God's own heart’ has so many enemies? What do you think?” The answers posted were pretty much what I expected. Some responses surprised me. A few wondered what I have been thinking about my own question.

I’m glad people asked—here’s my take on my own question. David had all kinds of enemies throughout his lifetime. But not all his enemies were alike. Sometimes his enemy seems to be the “infernal” kind—you know, “the dark enemy of our soul,” the unseen and invisible malevolent force often associated with fire. Other times, David’s enemies seem to be “external,” real flesh and blood people who betrayed him, chased him, fought him, misrepresented him, slandered him, framed him, and the list goes on and on. And then there is the third kind of enemy David had to contend with; an “internal” enemy, that is, himself.

God commended David as, "a man after God’s own heart,” (1 Sam. 13:14; Acts 13:22). We know that David was by no means a perfect man, so why the sterling commendation? I wonder if the answer doesn’t have something to do with his enemies, chiefly an enemy called himself.

Most days I have a default response when it comes to identifying my enemies. My kneejerk response when I perceive I’m in enemy territory is to conclude that my enemy is always “out there.” Among those I quickly want to brand enemy #1 are: secularists, liberals, the government, atheists, Muslims, those espousing alternative lifestyles, or who knows what? And while I’m busy identifying my enemies “out there,” it never occurs to me that enemy #1 might be just be me, the enemy “in here.” Could it be that the reason why David speaks so frequently and forthrightly about his enemies is because he regularly confronted his biggest enemy—himself. When I am willing to confront my own darkness, face my own shadow side and wrestle with my own self-righteous disposition, I am in a much better position to be God-formed. If I don’t understand the enemy within, I will make a thousand excuses for making those “out there” the enemy.

Quaker Parker Palmer says in his book, Let Your Life Speak, “We like to talk about the outer world as if it were infinitely complex and demanding, but it is a cakewalk compared to the labyrinth of our inner lives.”

Package Delivery

Have you ever had one of those moments when you woke up with an odd thought or picture streaming through your head? That was my morning. I'm in Chennai, India all week interacting with and teaching Bible College students, pastors and professors. Yesterday I had a lively conversation with one of the professors and we were talking about the church's engagement with the world. When I awoke this morning an image came to mind. What would happen if the church viewed itself as an on-ramp to a highway? The highway is filled with people in speeding cars weaving between monotonously straight lines. Some chasing illusive dreams, some hopelessly bored in dead end jobs, some fearing layoff, some simply hoping to survive.

On Monday mornings what if the people who gathered in churches the day before scattered the other six days of the week? What if every day Christ-followers loaded their luggage racks with parcels of love, truth, beauty and goodness and became a human carrier system to human beings and human doings? What if we chose to view our office pools, factory floors, executive suites, lunchrooms and classrooms as places in desperate need of daily deliveries of those same qualities? What if the Church saw itself as the real, "United Parcel Service" taking to on-ramps with redemptive parcels of hope?

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Letting the Lion Undress You

In his classic Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis captures beautifully so many elements of the Christian experience. Book 3 of the Chronicles introduces us to Eustace Clarence Scrubb. Eustace was cousin to Edmund and Lucy, had no friends, and deep down enjoyed bullying and bossing everyone. In Edmund’s words, he became worse even when you tried to be nice to him.

One day Eustace stumbles across the entrance to a dark cave, which turned out to be a dragon’s lair. Once inside he discovers a treasure containing a bracelet, which he slips around his wrist. Soon after, he falls asleep and when he awakes he noticed a strange pain in his arm. Eustace had become something he was not before—he had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. The bracelet that had fitted very nicely on the upper arm of the boy was far too small for the thick, scaly foreleg of a dragon. At that moment Eustace realized he had become a monster, cut off from the whole human race and an “appalling loneliness came over him…and he began to wonder if he himself had been such a nice person as he had always supposed.”

When the dragon-that-had-been Eustace was reunited with his cousins, Edmund and Lucy, he began to make new discoveries about himself. When he flew over bodies of water and saw the reflection of himself he shuddered at his bat-like wings, the saw-edge ridge on his back and the curvature of his claws. It was dreary being a dragon. He wanted in the worst way to be a boy again.

One morning Eustace (the dragon) tells Edmund about a dream that he had had the night before. In his dream a huge lion approaches him and asks him to follow him to the top of a mountain where there was a garden—trees and fruit and everything. And in the middle of the garden there was a well. The well was a big bubbling well with marble steps going down into it and Eustace thought he could slip into the well to soothe the pain in his leg caused by the under-sized bracelet. But the lion tells him he must undress himself. Confused by the lion’s instructions, Eustace said to himself,

"I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress myself because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.”

When the dragon-that-had-been Eustace steps into the water, he notices the reflection of himself once again. He saw that he was still hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as he had been before. There must be a smaller, scaly suit underneath and so he starts scratching and peeling this under skin too. He steps out of this layer of skin and goes down into the water again only to discover the same thing happened again. He thinks to himself, “Oh, dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.”

It was then that the lion said to him, "YOU WILL HAVE TO LET ME UNDRESS YOU." Even though Eustace was afraid of his claws—he was desperate. So he just laid flat on his back and let the lion do it.

"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away…He peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I’d done myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt—and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly looking than the others had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I had no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I had turned into a boy again…After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me.”

When I read and reflected on this scene from the Chronicles of Narnia, I couldn’t help but ponder and think about my own reality. I want to be different; I want to change. But do I really understand and grasp all that it involves? Am I really willing to undergo change, or do I merely want to engage in a bit of my own self-engineered reformation? Am I more of a monster than I’m willing to admit? Have I faced my own appalling loneliness? Do my most cherished relationships often bear the collateral damage of my dragon-like behavior? Have I really faced my own false self? Have I settled for a painless and pointless kind of change that demands very little and results in less?

Lord, inner, real, deep down change requires more than my obedience, it demands my surrender. Grant me grace to lie on my back and let the lion of Judah do it. Remove from me my scales of selfishness, my hideous habits, and my dragon-like disposition. Take me out and dress me in garments of grace. And in that delicious moment, help me to give you thanks that I’m truly different.

S t r e t c h e d

On Oil Spills and Heart Health

This morning I was reading Psalm 103. David begins, "Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name." His words, "my inmost being" got me thinking. Why so much attention to the inmost self? The inmost self is the interior me. It's that part of me that no one else sees. It is the hidden me, veiled to the human eye, but nevertheless of vital importance. In ancient Hebrew literature, sometimes the inmost place is referred to as the "heart" or the "eye." Simply put, the inmost place is the place most real to us, the center that defines us, orients us and animates our lives. On one occasion Jesus said that it is from this center, this core place that relational toxins like, "evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander" come forth (Matt. 15:19). No wonder David said earlier in Psalm 51, "You Lord desire truth in the inner parts, you teach wisdom in the inmost place." (Ps. 51:6).

Since it's so much in the news today the question occurred to me, "What does the BP oil spill in the Gulf teach me about my interior life?" At the time that I am writing this blog we are in the 51st day of the Gulf Oil Disaster. Undoubtedly the ecological and environmental consequences of this catastrophe will far exceed any of the previous disasters. In the early days when we were first learning about the oil spill in the Gulf, the public was misinformed. BP Executives grossly underestimated in their initial reports the severity of the situation. Now we are learning that in spite of sophisticated attempts to plug the well, it continues to spew upwards of 25,000 barrels of oil every 24 hours. Do the math--a barrel contains approximately 40 gallons of oil equalling 1,000,000 gallons of oil dumping into the Gulf every 24 hours. Scientists tell us that the oil is pouring forth from a source more than a mile below the surface of the ocean. At first, the effects of the oil spill remained secluded, buried and out-of-view from the public eye. But now in its fifty-first day, the whole world knows what was once hidden. What was innermost in the ocean floor is now uppermost in people's minds. The once beautiful azure and turquoise waters of the Gulf are now laced and stripped with currents of brown, oily pollutants. Pristine sandy beaches are being threatened, marine life is being drenched with petroleum, fishing industries have suffered, and the livelihoods of thousands have been affected. And now weather scientists are predicting an unusually severe hurricane season raising the strong possibility that the toxic mass now present in the Gulf will be carried by the loop current up the Atlantic seaboard. All of this because, what originated in the inmost place of the ocean floor has now reached the surface.

What does an environmental disaster teach me about the spiritual life? For one, whenever I ignore the "inmost" place, I run the very real risk of setting the stage for the release of harmful pollutants and toxins into my relational world, my ethical world and my spiritual world. Whenever I cut corners devotionally, ignore divine standards morally and fail to monitor my heart personally, it's only a matter of time before what was once hidden and concealed from the public eye eventually rises to the surface. Usually by that time the damage is already done.

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