Kitchen Brooms and Last Words

I saw a woman today trying to clean up a landslide with a kitchen broom.  I laughed and my team member Jennifer took a photo to document the ridiculous event.  Have you even seen a problem but not had the right tools to deal with it properly?  

Jennifer and I drove into Chaguarpamba today to have some discipleship time with our small groups.  It was as normal a day as could be expected. Once we drove into town we knew all of our plans had gone out the window.  Sadly, as we drove into town we saw that there was a large procession of townspeople walking together towards the local catholic church.  There was a tent set up with many chairs stacked up in front of our friends home.  We quickly figured out that it was a funeral procession and after a quick question to a nearby neighbor we found out that the brother of our dear friend Samuel had died.

It was another reminder of why we are trying to move to Chaguarpamba.  We want to be a part of the lives of our friends and not just a weekly meeting.  I am so grateful that we arrived in town when we did today.  I am thankful we were able to offer a warm embrace and a word of hope.  

As we sat in the church and listened to the priest i felt a heaviness in the room.  The priest told of how Freddy (Samuel's brother) had died from alcohol poisoning.  He then began to preach to his audience of how they should not be like Freddy. Learn to control yourself.  Behave.  Work harder to control yourself.  He then asked for all the mourners to begin to pray that Freddy's sins would be forgiven.  Everything in me wanted to shout out "ITS TOO LATE!!!"  An entire room of people sitting their believing they could pray him into heaven was so heart breaking for me.  Such a lost group of people being led by a man who didn't understand scripture himself.  It was suffocating.  

As I sat and listened I wondered what Freddy would have thought if he knew that the only thing spoken about him at his funeral was "Don't be like him".  I had met Freddy several times.  He was a rough character who was generally drunk when I saw him.  He once gifted me a couple of mangoes and made googly eyes at me as if to say "come hither".  I politely accepted the mangoes and declined the come hither.  

That was all i ever really knew about Freddy.  A few encounters and only one thing stood out; his drinking problem.  He had the wrong tools to remedy his situation.  His brother Samuel, and Samuel's family have been in discipleship with us for about 8 months.  They are seeking after God and sharing what they have learned with others; with people like Samuel's brother Freddy.  He was offered the correct tools (salvation through the gift of Jesus Christ) but he chose to keep chipping away at the landslide of his life with a kitchen broom (alcohol).  

It got me thinking about my own mortality.  When the day comes that I arrive in heaven before my God and Savior what will those left behind say of me?  Will they talk about my faults?  My shortcomings?  I really hope not.  I hope that they talk about my love for God and honestly if all they talked about was God and not me a snip i would be elated.  After all its not about me.  And its ALL about God.  

I sat in the church looking at the sea of people dressed in black.  I saw so many people needing to know that there was hope.  They see pain and suffering on a regular basis.  They live hard lives.  But if they only knew that there was hope.  If they could only see that rather than trying to work for their salvation that they could receive the free gift of eternal life, that hard life might not seem so hard.  They could find joy and peace.  They need the right tools.  

 I pray that we can continually encourage this family and many others to discover the correct supplies that God provides through scripture to handle what life throws at them.   I pray that tonight as Samuel and his family rest their heads on their pillows to sleep that they rest in the assurance that they have found in Christ.  I pray that God would be their comforter.  And I pray that when it is their time to enter heaven, that those left behind would speak of the God they served and the Jesus they knew and shared.