Recibe Toda La Gloria

Hello All,
There was more that I meant to write about in regard to the weekend, so perhaps I´ll tackle a bit of it today. During church on Sunday, I found myself coming to God wanting nothing except a humble heart. I just asked God to take all of me, putting myself on His altar, with my greatest heart´s desire being that He would take the offering of my life (however small a gift it is). It has been my consistent prayer of late that God would make me a servant, the very least of these. I want to see Jesus in every single person and grasp what a great privilege it is to kneel in service before every person--no matter what their status is in the world. I fail so often at this, but I do want God to help me to die daily, to shed my selfishness, and to truly give me the heart of a servant. I picked up Mother Theresa´s book again yesterday, and I was reminded that her prayer was that she would refuse God nothing. I also want this to be my prayer--no matter how difficult.

Mother Theresa, according to Come Be My Light, suffered with an intense darkness in her soul even as she was pouring her life out for others. She felt abandoned and wondered in God´s silence if He loved her, but her actions demonstrate her faith in defiance of her feelings of despair--she told God that she was willing to endure the darkness, that she believed He did exist and did love her even when she couldn´t feel His presence, and she continued to obey, praying that she would continue to give Him everything He asked of her.

In Elisabeth Elliot´s book, Passion and Purity, she mentions how she asked God to either take away her desires or to fulfill them, and God´s response to her was that His desire was to teach her to want something better. This is the place where I find myself currently. I love Honduras. I so desire to be here, and there are so many elements to this place that fill my heart with labored longing. But, although God has placed those desires within me--my love for this place and this people--He also wants me to offer those back to Him as a sacrifice so that He can teach me to want something even better. It is not easy. I feel stubbornness rise up in me at times, and I have to submit to God once again. But, other times, like yesterday, God grants me a clarity of what He is teaching me to want--just His will and His glory. He is teaching me to want His best, to submit to His work instead of trying to conduct my own in His name. Sometimes, Christians fly into a frenzy of action and programs, projects and plans and say that they are doing ´´His work,´´ but at times, this work (the good) doesn´t actually cost us anything. His best always does. It costs us ourselves, and we must die daily, surrendering our good for His best.

On Sunday, Papí Alvin spoke from Isaiah and Genesis. He recounted the stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. He made the note that when Adam and Eve realized they were naked after they were disobedient, they tried to make clothes out of leaves to hide themselves. But these clothes did not cover them sufficiently; otherwise, God wouldn´t have had to make clothes for them out of animal skins. Papí then made the point that Cain´s offering to God was produce--from the earth and reminiscent of Adam´s attempts to right himself with God (which he could not do). Cain´s offering represented man´s attempts at self-sufficiency and the times when we come to God with our own works, trying to win His affection and approval. Abel´s offering of burnt animal sacrifice, on the other hand, was reminiscent of what God did for Adam and Eve. He made them clothes of animal skins to hide their nakedness. He sent His own Son as a sacrifice to right humanity with Himself. He did that--no human did, and no human could. Thus, Abel´s gift was pleasing to God because it represented the acceptance of what God does for us, rather than what we think we can do for Him. Just as it says in Romans 12, ´´Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him.´´ For me, this echoes that idea of our good versus God´s best as well.

My senior year in high school, I gave a presentation to a church about Honduras and the need to be more missions-minded. After the talk, various people in the church asked what they should do with the information I had just given them. It´s funny looking back on that moment because I was still in a place of learning that for myself, and my guess is that my answer was less than satisfactory. The tendency is to fly into a frenzy of urgent actions without a heart motivated by love or to despair over our lack of ability to help, sinking deeper into complacency. Neither is what God calls us to. The truth is that He calls us to seek Him and to be recklessly obedient. Seeking Him means being still--laying down our plans for action and any works we could bring Him of our own doing. Being obedient means that when He does show us what it is He is calling us to do--even when it is being still longer and only praying or when it is losing all of our life to become the least of these--that we do it, with bold and reckless abandon, secure in the promise of His best. As Jason Upton notes in his song, ´´Dying Star,´´ God calls us out of the whole, for the benefit of the whole, even when that means the very destruction of our own lives. And the truth is that it will always mean the destruction of our own lives because to be one with God and His kingdom means that self has to die daily.

On Sunday, both at the church in Tegus and from the church across the street in Esperanza, I heard the following song, and every time I hear it, it brings me to my knees with tears. It has become the deep prayer of my heart and a secret place in worship. While I realize it is in Spanish, if you have the chance to listen to it, please do so with an open heart.
Recibe Toda La Gloria
Receive All the Glory
Quiero levantar a tí mis manos
I want to lift my hands to You
Maravilloso Jesús
Marvelous Jesus
Milagroso Señor
Miraculous Lord

Llena este lugar con tu presencia
Fill this place with Your presence
Y has descender tu poder a los que estamos aquí
And send Your power to all who are here

Creo en tí, Jesús
I believe in You, Jesus
Y lo que aras en mí
And what you are cultivating in me
En mí, en mí
In me, in me

Recibe toda la gloria
Receive all the glory
Toda la honra
All of the honor
Precioso hijo de Dios
Precious Son of God

That´s really all I am learning to want--His glory in all things, even at the expense of myself and my desires. I have been learning slowly for a few years now how to be more intimate with God. Initially, the lesson was allowing God to truly know me even when that meant being flawed and vulnerable. Then, the lesson was to receive God´s love deeply, to let Him show me how He sees me, and to forgive myself as He forgives me. Now, I am learning that being intimate with someone is not always an enjoyable experience in the superficial sense of the word. Being that close with someone also entails carrying their burdens. Suffering with them. While it is a meager example, I see this as being true in my experiences with Roy. He is constantly running, constantly has something to do and someone to help. He very rarely gets a second of rest, and he willingly spends his life as a servant for others. There are times when he is in a time crunch or simply has far too many things to accomplish, and he feels stress. And when I´m around him, it reaches a point where I, too, literally feel his stress. Every time he sighs, I feel heavier. Every time he rubs his hands over his weary eyes or simply cannot stifle another yawn, I feel that, and I long to relieve the burden, to give him rest, even when I can´t. The point is that there is also a closeness to reach with God where we share in the suffering of Jesus and in the suffering of Jesus in others. He calls us to an intimacy where we carry His burdens. And this is the kind of intimacy I want to dedicate myself to.

Anyway, with those thoughts in mind, I want to tell you also a little bit about my precious students here. They light up my day in a way that I can´t begin to express.

None of my students have electricity in their homes in Chiligatoro. There is only one house that has electricity there, and it belongs to the patriarch and community leader of the entire pueblo. My students come to school dirty with holes in their clothes and worn shoes on their feet. (I´m so grateful they have shoes!) It is cold in Chiligatoro. The teachers wear gloves, and sometimes, the uniforms of the students are quite thin. The decaying of my students teeth is actually visible. They are often quiet and shy, sucking on their fingers (no matter their age) or speaking so softly that you can´t understand them. Other students are quite confident and readily talk in class and address me boldly as ´´Sarita.´´ All of my students are brilliant, truly. I am so blessed by how they are learning and how they desire to learn more. My first graders run up to us and yell, ´´yellow,´´ and ´´green.´´ My sixth graders beg everyday for English class (even when it´s not their day to have class), and they catch me during free time to learn even more. All of my students have such vibrant energy. The boys utilize every single second of spare time to play soccer, and they have been using the same, worn, plastic ball since I´ve been here. Today, that ball had a hole in it, so they patched it with a piece of chewing gum. At lunch, the mothers take turns bringing food, and they eat the catracho usual--rice and beans, tortillas, and occasionally soup or oatmeal. They grin every time I tell them ´´buen provecho´´ as is custom here. (It is wishing someone a good meal.) Every child, no matter how young or old, cannot help but smile back at me when I smile at them. And many have now graduated to daily hugs. I am slowly learning their names, and the children are so ecstatic when I remember them personally. (Please pray that I can learn as many as possible!) I love my students dearly, and I will miss them so very much when I leave.

I don´t necessarily know the detailed purposes of this trip to Honduras--there seem to be many, actually. But one thing I want to leave this place with is the heart of a servant and a lifestyle dedicated to obedience, in such a way that He truly receives all the glory.

Humbled,
Sarah