Nicaragua Journal

I found this as I was rereading through my journal I kept in Nicaragua. I wrote this on the plane ride home as I reflected on all we’d done and seen and began to focus on where we go from here. I hope this encourages you today as it did for me:

“I am overwhelmed with a longing for the restoration of God’s creation. God’s world is so beautiful even despite its fallenness. Clouds, lakes, rocks, trees, animals; God’s beauty is everywhere if we will choose to see it.

I’m starting to think it’s the same for us as well. It’s hard to remember sometimes (oftentimes) that each soul God has made has the potential for explosive love and life and glory. I think I am beginning to understand what [C.S.] Lewis meant when he wrote that we’ve never met an ordinary person. What an overwhelming blessing to be surrounded by so much potential for God’s glory, power, love, and redemption! 

Let us not be burdened by the task, let us be honored and humbled to be used. We’re all orphans looking for an open door. We’re all just looking to go home.”

That CS Lewis quote mentioned earlier is the following from The Weight of Glory: “The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken . . . There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal . . . It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.” 

I am ashamed, but not surprised to admit that this is a lesson from our trip that I had not thought much about over the past month. But as I am reminded of what God taught me during our time in Nicaragua, I realize that this is the reality of not just a trip overseas, but of our every day lives. Here in Dayton we are surrounded by people that desperately need the redemption of God. Let’s bear that burden for them.