Thoughts on a Sunday

I visited a ROCKING pentacostal church this Sunday.  Picture a good-sized sanctuary in the United States with at least a third of the people jumping up and down during the fast songs and you'll have an idea of what church was like this morning.  (If you click on this link, you'll see what I'm talking about:  http://youtu.be/6VpHJH8nwPI). 

Today was the first Sunday, so we had Santa Cena (the Lord's Supper).  It was kind funny because right about that point in the service I was starting to think, "God, I don't think I can do this anymore..." not because of anything in particular about this church as much as past difficulties that made it hard to get into the worship.  But then I realized they were getting ready to distribute the Santa Cena and that I didn't have to DO anything.  I just had to be there.  That that's part of the joy of the cross, really...that we can be wounded, hurting, and we're not required to DO anything.  Just show up and let God take care of the rest.  (Perhaps that's over-simplifying things a bit, but at the moment, it made sense.)  And I didn't even have to step forward for the communion; the communion was brought to me.

Then after the Lord's Supper we greeted the people around us.  A young girl was seated next to me (she looked to be maybe 12 years old) and when I patted her arm like the people here do, she smiled at  me shyly and then surprised me by giving me a hug.

It made me think about community.  Because I'm not sure I could have fully joined into the worship if they hadn't drawn me into it.  If I had had to go forward alone, find the strength within me to carry me through, I'm not sure it would have gone so well. 

Then this afternoon the family I am staying with invited me to go to the mall with them because one of the children was in a program there.  I was not prepared for how the city has changed.  The pastor of the church I attended in junior high used to tell us about the amazement he always felt when his missionary family would return to the U.S when he was a boy, his awe at the mounds of food in the grocery store, the seemingly endless rows of shelves.  Today I felt this way at the mall.  Could so much have changed in only six years?  Do they really have TWO malls with so many imported American items on the shelves?  It makes more sense to me now why so many teachers are opting for their own apartments.  Finding familiar foods is amazingly simple, even odd imports I never would have thought I would see on Guatemalan shelves--things like fruit roll-ups and Dunkaroos.

I asked the lady of the house if she thought that meant the rural areas might start to change as well.  She said already in her village they have improved ways of purifying water and selling it to the residents.  I have heard of other villages where there is still no access to water at all, where people have to walk to a river a few miles away or rely on rain water.  Villages where parasites are prevalent because of lack of sanitation.  But maybe with the way things are going the next six years will bring change to them, too.  I can hope.

When I was here before, fresh out of college, I thought the difference between our cultures was so great, that the material lack of things was bigger than it was.  Perhaps that was the materialist American in me talking.  In a strange way, it took seeing the people gain those things they had been lacking to see how much we really are the same.

There is energy here.  The people seem more content.  But more than that, they are people.  People, I am realizing, I had defined in part by what they owned, even though material belongings are such a small part of the picture.  But who they are hasn't changed; how I look at them has.