The rain drops bounced off tin roofs, joined their brothers in sudsy mud puddles, and stained our clothing grey with dampness. All green things rejoiced at its arrival, delighting in the rain’s determination to refresh the exhausted earth. We were huddled inside a small home, cracked concrete floors, wooden paneling painted bright blue, and the tin roof which sounded like tambourines in the downpour. Angelina was her name, mother of two beautiful boys. The oldest peeked at us from the ground by his mother’s skirts, the youngest of eighteen weeks slept peacefully in the arms of my teammate.
Angelina, do you know the Lord?
No, she does not know the Lord, at least not the One True God. She worships a god that is glorified by most of the world, the one that requires good works as sufficient sacrifice, abject obedience as penance. This god is a frightful creature, conceived by man and fueled by our prideful determination to be good enough. I know this god well, for it is the one I worshiped for most of my life. It is the idol I constructed for myself, laying gross sacrifices of self-reliance at it’s stoic feet. Never did it acknowledge my hard work to be good, nor could it tilt it’s head in acceptance, for the only life he had was that which I gave him in my imagination. The One True God, the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, the eternal, all-powerful, completely kind, entirely merciful, sincerely just God who does not accept such offerings. He desires faith, presented on the alter of humility, as its sweet fragrance rises to His throne in heaven.
Angelina, like most of the world, is unaware of the truth of the gospel. She has heard of it, of course, preached from a prideful pulpit dripping in heresy and threatening the fire of hell. She has heard it as white people enter her home, people who are unaware of the things she has been through, who don’t care for her earthly needs as long as her soul is saved. She asks an unresponsive god how to feed her children, how to keep her home from flooding, how to make her husband come home at night. She clings to the few things she owns, her pots and plastic cups and stained curtains, knowing that material scarcity is all she has to hope for in this life. And if this life is all we have, Christians of all people are those who are to be most pitied. For if this life is all we have, then all we can hope for is anxiety and injustice, not having enough or having too much. We worship the god of work, striving for trophies that glitter today and rust tomorrow. We worship the god of “do better” hoping that all of our goodness will somehow appease him to direct the universe in our favor.
But this is not our home, this is not the subject of all our hopes, thank God. For if it was, if God did not exist and this earth was all there was, then the best thing we could hope for is impoverished pleasures, even though they could not possibly fill the gaping holes in our hearts. The good news is that our God does not desire our best intentions and inadequate efforts and that our reward is not found on this weary earth. The good news is that our God is all that we have, and He is also all that we need. The good news is that salvation is a sure promise that will not change at the whim of a callus God. We get to know Him, we get to be loved by Him, we get to enjoy Him in this life and the one to come. When everything we do is not enough, His grace is sufficient for us. This is true for me, who has come from the material wealth of America, and it is true for Angelina, and it is true for every human whose hearts still pump blood through their precious bodies, those bodies which were made in the image of God Himself. Serve the LORD, the One True God. Serve the One who loves you unconditionally, serve the One who desires you more than all the works you can do. Serve the One who doesn’t promise ease, but He promises peace.
