Wednesdays with Grace
Four Lessons for the Garbage Children, and their Lesson for Us
For our mission trip, we will be teaching four Bible lessons to the children at Brazos de Jesús School in Honduras. Below are the four lessons, why we have chosen them and, most importantly, what the children have already taught us.
1. Lesson One: You are loved.
If there is anything we can impart to these children, I hope we can convey a sense that they are loved. God loves them. We, as members of Christ’s family, love them. What armor can we give them to resist the temptation to join a criminal gang, or succumb to a life of prostitution? Each person’s life is, in itself, a miracle. In the breadth and scope of the universe, consider all the incalculable occurrences that had to occur for you to even exist. You are the only you who will ever exist. Patterns repeat themselves, both in nature and history, but there will never be another you. You, by the fact you exist, are a miracle, and God’s greatest sign of His presence, power and love. Maybe this concept, that they are loved, and that each one is worthy of love, is the most important impact we can have in our limited time.
2. Lesson Two: Love others.
Just as we are loved, we are called to love others. Loving others requires two difficult steps: First we must step outside ourselves and try to see the world from another’s perspective; and second, we must think ahead, contemplating our reaction to others in a way that does not escalate conflict. Our nature is to live in our own inner world and expect others to understand us. This step is an expansion upon lesson one. You love others because, by recognizing that you are loved by God, you realize that so are they. Were I to mistreat another, I would be denying them the dignity that I desire for myself. These children live in a world where gang violence is common. They understand cycles of violence based upon conflicts that perpetually escalate. One person suffers a perceived insult, which begets a response, which itself spawns a counter-response, and so on. Eventually, people are killed. Loving others requires thinking before acting; contemplating how our own actions affect others, for good or bad. Christ’s message to love others is especially important for such impressionable children living in a violent world.
3. Lesson Three: Jesus saves.
The world is not right. We see a fallen world, for we know that sin abounds. It is right to feel righteous anger at injustice. It is not right that children are born in a garbage dump. When we view the world, and know its flaws, the heart of all that is wrong is sin. We can debate politics, economics and policies all day, but, in the end, the essence of the world’s troubles lies in sin. Until that problem is addressed, the problem, no final solution will be found. It is hard to imagine a group who might better understand the brokenness of this world than children born in a garbage dump. In many ways, their lives exemplify such fallenness because only in a sinful world would innocent children be born into such an existence. The idea that the ultimate solution was offered through Christ’s sacrifice should resonate, perhaps more than any other audience, with these children. There is no hiding the effect of sin from them. Nothing protects their innocence. That garbage dump is a representative embodiment of a fallen world, which is why we are called to be there. Jesus died to save you, to offer eternal life, but also to begin the process of our restoration with God so that no child will ever be born into a garbage dump.
4. Lesson Four: We live in faith.
How can we, in our time at Brazos, impart the notion that salvation is a gift; that God’s grace, and His grace alone, offers our salvation? You do not have to earn it, for the path to salvation comes through faith. Once we live in faith, we emulate Christ, not because there is a scoreboard in the sky tallying our good works versus sinfulness, but because we have been freed from the bondage of sin. Our hope is that this idea of living in faith, of doing good not because we are seeking to score points, but because it emanates from within, and that, by doing so, our eternal life is assured, along with Christ’s eventual kingdom on earth, is a message that will resonate with these children. It is a message that is needed.
In preparing for the mission trip, those children have already taught us an important lesson: Profound Humility. We will have to meet the children where they are. For them, we have to consider that the world has essentially offered three possibilities: (1) For boys, join a gang; for girls, enter prostitution; (2) remain at the garbage dump with their family and live out their lives; or (3) walk several thousand miles to the US border.
Consider these alternatives. Why isn’t joining a gang better than living in a garbage dump? For a girl, wouldn’t even prostitution offer a contemplatable alternative? To them, we live in paradise. Who are we to ask them to forgo alternatives that, for them, might seem better? What alternative are we offering? Through God’s grace, we can offer, or introduce, the ultimate alternative. However, please pray that God opens our hearts to humility. Pray that we can put aside our own worldview and biases. Pray that the Holy Spirit works through us, so that we may truly meet, come to know, and offer love to these children.
In Christ,
Mort Taylor