Out of the Blue

I peeked over the edge of a small windowsill in the big yellow school bus my squad and I have been taking to ministry each morning for the past two months. My heart skipped a beat as I was immediately captivated by a green valley between two mountains, the surface littered with palm trees and lush vegetation soaking in fresh sunlight after a downpour. The winding road that runs through the mountain forces us to slow down and feel every gust of wind that may sweep across our faces, and comb through loose locks of my hair. Below, bright green rivers rush over mossy rocks, reflecting golden light pouring from every direction out of the vast and cloudless blue sky. 

“Reggie!” I exclaimed as I turned to the kind eyed Haitian man beside me. His head snapped over as soon as I uttered the first syllable of his name. “Look at this river!” He peered out of the small window at the striking view. His eyes immediately drawn to the body of water below, lit up as soon as they were met by it. His momentarily startled expression relaxed into a soft smile and in his deep yet quiet voice he said, “Yes, that is beautiful.” In this small moment, his love for every kind of body of water deepened all the more, I’m sure. And we continued on in silence as so, both gazing in awe out of the window of the big yellow school bus.

Walking into the Dominican Republic, I was terrified of what my time here would bring. Coming from the fast paced and heavy atmosphere of Craiova, Romania, I thought the DR would mean suffocation and deprivation. No WiFi, no snacks, only water to drink, no leaving the campus except on weekends, and a country where very little to no English is spoken. All of these miniscule inconveniences seem absolutely ridiculous as I look back on them now. When I got here, I felt the Lord speaking over this country the words “abundance” and “abandonment.” The latter made me even more skeptical than I had been, and yet the Lord pulled me into jumping right on into the unknown despite the fear that accompanied me. 

Here I sit, two months later and on the other side of it all, having experienced abandonment I thought would shatter me in the moment, and tasting the abundance of the Lord in ways that made me cry in utter joy and contentment. I realize that the abandonment which lies within the cost of discipleship becomes something I reach for when the other side of it means that I get to claim in fullness that “I have seen the Lord.” 

It is a humbling privilege to walk through a small curtain into a home with concrete floors and a tin roof to simply sit with a Haitian mother who bears the weight of the world on her shoulders. So many of the hours spent doing this consist of painful silence in which I can’t think of anything to say, because I will never fully understand the burden which her circumstances yield upon her. However, if I can simply share some small piece of the Lord, He can speak perfect peace out of one utterly broken vessel into another. It is the only assurance I can cling to. 

It’s an honor to help host kids clubs where kids come solely because they know they’ll receive a warm plate of food to fill their malnourished bellies. It hurts to know how hungry they are. It hurts to see ways in which physical poverty physically deteriorates the creatures that the author of the universe has so intricately created. However, the Lord has unveiled my eyes to realize that spiritual poverty is even more deeply ingrained than the physical. 

For so long, I discredited the poverty which dwells amidst the towering industry of corporate America, the dark yet developed streets of southern Romania, and even the dirt roads of the Dominican. I didn’t recognize it, simply because it wasn’t physically noticeable. The poverty that lives in each of these places is a spiritual poverty. The inhabitants of each, so incredibly starved for even a small taste of the Father, turn to things like lying, cheating, alcohol, sex, materialism, or simply anything that may temporarily feel filling. The danger that lies in lacking recognition of this type of poverty is the resulting lack of awareness of the Father, and the lack of acceptance of salvation. It results in further absence of goodness, absence of faith, absence of hope, and simply an overwhelming and suffocating amount of emptiness. 

The fact is, spiritual poverty is far worse than physical. It’s a poverty that is so deeply ingrained within human nature that we often don’t even realize it’s there when it is. It puts us in chains only Christ has been able to relinquish us from. 

I have seen and heard and felt things here that I will never be able to ignore the plain hard truth of, but the greatest truth is the sole truth which plucks the anxiety out of my lungs, slowly unties the knot from my stomach, and redeems my broken perception of what I have considered poverty to be for so long. He is the One who has sat with me in the depths of my own spiritual poverty, and in the dark and ugly stench of my sin. The Rock on which I stand, my Savior, and the sole Eradicator of my iniquity. 

The abandonment and the abundance the Lord has brought forth during my time in the Dominican has come about in ways I never could have guessed before I stepped foot into this country. I didn’t realize I would be saying goodbye to five of my closest friends and squadmates while being here, I didn’t realize the realities of poverty would wreck me as much as they did. However, I also didn’t realize the amount of joy and life and light that would come from the depths of a conversation on a big yellow school bus with Reggie, or from the sweet smiles and cheek kisses and hand holds of the children at the local school where I taught. 

How sweet it is that the Father brings us moments like these to hold onto, “out of the blue” as they may come (as Reggie would say), even in the midst of the suffocation brought on by our own insufficiency. What is better still than even the moments which our Creator unexpectedly clothes in divinity, is the fact that He eradicates the space between Him and me. He takes my weaknesses and trades them each for strength; He replaces every sorrow with joy; and, He plucks me from the loose soil on which I first wickedly chose to stand and places me upon the firm Foundation that He is. 

In the simplicity of His sovereignty lies the fact that He will never fail, no matter the tribulation and no matter the detestable and broken reality of our inadequacy without Him. We are found worthy and sufficient in the light that dwells in being called a child of the Most High. We were created to worship the One who created this truth, and we get to do just that. What an absolute honor it is to partake in inviting others into the truth of this divine reality. What a humbling privilege it is to live for the Lord and to serve in the Kingdom of God.