Salvation has come...

I posted here a couple weeks ago about our staff trip to Croc, Mexico.  Kurt and Emily Rietema just returned back to Kansas City for a while before the summer stuff in Croc kicks into high gear.  The following story written by Kurt is a wonderful narrative about transformation, the kind of transformation that happens constantly in our ministry but usually gets relegated to a statistical report.  God is at work in the world for the renewal of Shalom.  I am so ecstatic to be able to co-operate with the agenda of God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven...

There was indeed something strange about David that night. We went over to David and Carmen’s place because earlier that day as we poured the floor for their new house, I asked him if they had had enough to eat. He said "no". Knowing that he had a drug addiction, I wasn’t about to fork over the cash directly to him to go buy groceries. So I went on a late night shopping spree with the boys to Deposito Hernandez. David came to the front gate, and as I asked him what he needed, I was met with no verbal response. I nervously answered my own questions by filling in the blanks, hoping for the slightest gesture of assent. He was obviously strung out on drugs, but what he said to me in his eyes still haunts me. I never caught any scent of anger, but rather a bone-chilling gaze that questioned me like the demon-possessed man who cried out, "What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?" Yet at the same time there was another David who surfaced just long enough to noiselessly cry for help before sadly submerging back into the dark depths of his eyes. It was then that I was reminded that our struggle is not against flesh and blood.

The situation of David and Carmen was probably the saddest and seemingly hopeless that Emily and I have ever encountered in Croc. They lived in a shack not fit for a latrine and ate food I wouldn’t feed my dog. The hopelessness in Carmen’s face lay thicker than the clothes and trash scattered around their place. Even the baby they were expecting in days brought, not joy, but worry from their excessive drug use. They needed much more than a new house. They needed a new life and a new hope.

This is the part of the show when we typically remind our motivated, goal-oriented church groups that it isn’t as much about building a house as it is about building relationships. And this particular group from Faith CRC got the hint. Knowing that David and Carmen’s lives were out of our hands, we prayed and prayed. We bought Cokes, talked with them, and played with their young daughter, Mari.

Nearing the completion of the house, Carmen was ready to go to the hospital to give birth to her son, so we had an early house dedication with them. We shared in words what we did with our hands that week. We invited them to seek Christ as we, too, are seeking Christ and prayed a blessing over them.

A couple of weeks later, David and Carmen show up at church with their new baby boy, Jesus (remember in Spanish, that’s hey-soos, not the other guy we know and love). They wanted to dedicate their son to God and in the process decided to make a public commitment to follow Christ. God had been pursuing them and initiating change and infiltrating hope into their desperate lives. Accuse Pastor Martinez of a little coersive foul play in that decision if you wish, but still, they took a visible step a faith. In the same way that you could almost tangibly feel the weight of their oppression before, now you could sense the lightness of their liberation.

A few days later after persistent invitations to visit David and Carmen in their new house, we went. Arriving at the gate to the house, we could peer just inside to see that Carmen was lying on her bed reading her new Bible. She was elated that we had come saying that the previous night she was praying to God asking if we’d come to visit her and here we were--answered prayer. Emily and I listened as she told us her family history and recounted her pains. Her stories of abuse, incest, and attempted rapes played out like a twisted screenplay of an R-rated movie that we wished we could have walked out on at the opening scene to preserve our sheltered innocence. Later, David walked in and shared a short, sad memoir of his curtailed childhood. He was a boy of twelve out on the streets after his mom died. All he had left to remember her by was a broken tv that blankly stared back at us from the corner of their new room. But the past lies in the past.

Listening to their stories of hardship makes it easy for me to sit back in my leather chair, call up mom and dad on the phone, and say like Pharisee, "thank God I’m not them." And I do thank God I never had to wade through the crap that they did. What’s difficult, however, is to look inside my own soul, beat my breast, and cry out, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner." My mind may not be able to devise the kind of hell that was poured out on them by so many others. But an honest look at myself tells me that I’ve got the same dark seed. The only difference is that the violence in their families had optimum conditions for incubating and perpetuating ever bigger and uglier hybrids of evil. I think it’s best that I end my story here and let the words of another bring true wisdom. We’ve all sung this song before, but only a few find the answer. Paul says it best. "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!" The answer David and Carmen are finding is in the cross and in a bruised and battered church that realizes we’re just as desperately in need of the same irresistable grace of God.

Comments

[Jessica King]

Kurt and Emily are amazing. I want to live in Croc. lets go back!

[ray]

another amazing story of the process of redemption ... this is why i show up at youthfront everyday, wanting to be part of transformations like this one.

[moe didde]

mmm..I concur. And in addition to the spiritual blessedness of that story, I'd also like to commend Kurt for his amazing journalistic talent. well said!

[Dan & Amy (from Down South!!)]

Mexico holds a personal and deep commitment in our lives, can't wait till' that day we can join the team farther down south!! Continually amazed by God's Greatness!!

[Mike]

ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto...