In my last post, I alluded to a lesson I have been processing and thinking through lately, as things that I learn cause these moments to resurface. Those particular thoughts at the end of my last post have root in a moment in El Salvador this past summer. I didn't expand on the story because two stories in one post is far too much. However, I think it's a story worth sharing because it's a moment that grows richer every time I reflect on it. And due to my fleeting moments at home throughout my busy summer, I didn't have much time to share a lot of stories.
It was one of my last days in El Salvador and my work group took a break from brick-laying to visit a nearby squatter community called Milagro de Dios. As we walked across the bridge to enter, the land before me was packed tight with misshapen tin shacks, their walls made of trash bags supported by sticks. The landscape before me was topped off with men in uniform walking around with machine guns. I would later found out they were surveying the land.
As we walked, I had a difficult time believing the reality before my eyes. Children were running around with dirty clothes and no shoes on. People were drinking dirty water - water straight from the polluted lake nearby that they still had to pay for. Those who had electricity had one light bulb, which cost them $18/month to keep on. Oh, and forget about bathrooms.
Eventually we found ourselves in the home of the family of a man named Jose. Jose is a father of 3 children, 5 grandchildren, and another one on the way. He and his wife live with all of their children (and 2 son-in-laws) and their 5 grandchildren in the little 2-room shack we barely squeezed our team into. His only job was selling ice cream for $.25/each and the only reason we found him at home is that during the rainy season, which it currently was, ice cream is difficult to sell.
While eating some delicious coconut ice cream, we all gathered around to hear from Jose and his wife. They lived on very little and lacked any kind of security. The soldiers parading around outside of the perimeter of the community were a constant threat to the inhabitants - a reminder this land is not theirs and will eventually be taken from them. The land had become more valuable with the increasing presence of electricity and a bus station or parking lot is more valuable than hundreds of families who have no place else to go.
Despite all the troubles Jose and his wife had faced, the security they lacked, the comfort the lacked, and the fear in which they lived...both of them counted themselves as blessed. I couldn't fathom how that word belonged in this place. But they knew something many will never understand. They were experiencing a life - a full and rich life - that most will never experience. Through their sufferings, their trials, and their tribulations, they discovered the blessing God gave us in each other. They understood the way in which we were made - in the image of a relational and loving God. And because of this understanding, they weren't easily tossed into despair by the winds of chaos that seemed to always whirl around them. The knew who their God was, and they remained centered, balanced, and hopeful in him. They didn't blame him for their circumstances, they didn't turn from him for not giving them material blessing or worldly security. They allowed him to define what was to be cherished in their lives, what was to be important. They allowed him to be the lens in which they see their circumstances and the world around them.
Jose invited us into his home - a bunch of rich, white Americans - and said to us that he was blessed. What a perspective to have in life. Especially in the midst of people who clearly live comfortably, are healthy, and are favored; who are considered blessed by the world's standards.
There is sadness, darkness, and hurt in this world because we are willing to sacrifice our spouses for careers, our daughters to the god of money, greed, and lust, and our sons to military. We are willing to sacrifice each other in order to serve ideologies, ambitions, desires, dreams, careers, accreditation, power, and money. Jose and his family didn't have the luxury to even think about any of those things. In having so little, they learned the necessity for each other. They knew of the life serving each other and having each other brought to them. Jose and his family live richly, if one were to consider life and love rich and sacrifice poor.
One of the poorest, most uneducated men I'll ever meet taught me one of the greatest lessons I'll ever learn.
