Do you believe that the Lord has given you everything you need?
It is hard to describe the community that I am living in up in the mountains of Honduras. When I really think about it, there are few like it that still exist in the world. In 2018, there was a big hurricane in Honduras that ruined homes on the mountain. Huge mudslides caused entire houses to just be swept into oblivion.
The Hondurans on this mountain are well acquainted with risk, danger, and temporary realities. Getting on and off the mountain is a huge ordeal. It takes at least an hour on a good day in a good truck, if it is raining or even drizzling it is impossible. Houses on the mountain are far between and many families don’t own trucks, all they have is their feet.
Locals need to drive through a small river to get up the mountain, and during rainy season it is possible that passage to and from the mountain can be closed for literally months at a time! Can you even imagine? Living a life in a place that is already so secluded and sometimes not even being able to leave for months at a time. It’s intense.
The aspect of this hard working community that I believe sets it apart from a large part of the world is their self sufficiency. Most of what they eat and most of their building materials come from the mountain. It’s incredible! Their ability to find a use for everything has been greatly challenging my perspective.
In previous blogs I mentioned that we are building a church. What I failed to mention is that we are building an entire church from the ground up and I think it is quite possible that we are not going to use a single nail. If we need wood, we hike back into the woods with a machete and chop down a tree. We need bamboo for the walls so we hike down the mountain, chop the bamboo down and carry it back up. We then split the bamboo vertically in quarters with yet another machete (a new skill that I am admitantly very proud of).
To build the church site we took a chunk out of the mountain one shovel scoop and pick-ax whack at a time. We make barriers to hold back the dirt by stacking the downed trees, making stakes out of sticks, and then beating them into the ground with large rocks that we also carried down the mountain.
When we get to the point of making the walls (the foundation of which will be weaved bamboo), we will need to fill mud in all the crevices to make it more water-proofed. To aid in this process, we hiked a long ways up the mountain to find some pine trees under which we collected rice bags full of dead pine needles. Why? Apparently when you mix pine needles into the mud it makes it stronger, who’d have guessed?
Y’all I could go on and on about their creative ways of using God given materials. These people are strong, innovative, and dedicated.
I think often we miss what’s right in front of us. We pray for the Lord to provide and in looking for what we desire for ourselves we miss what is right in front of us. Don’t get me wrong, what I am seeing is poverty and I don’t want to glamorize it. If I could give all of these people waterproof homes, and cars, and ovens I would.
Knowing these facts, it is also true that a lot of these people have tested and tried and know deeply that the Lord provides for their needs. In my privileged position do I have the opportunity to know that truth in that same way? They know what it is like to look to God, say “I have nothing”, and then literally experience His provision in the land He created.
Not to say we should ditch our lives and live in the woods, no. BUT, stick with me here, what if God actually designed the earth to meet all of our physical needs?
” And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” -Philippians 4:19
In a funny way, this concept reminds me of packaged food. Few things if anything are better for us to eat than the things that Got put in the earth. The Lord gave us carrots and beans and steak. Humans gave us donuts and hamburgers and potato chips. Which is more life sustaining, what God gave us or what we tried to recreate ourselves? Nothing is better for our lives than God’s original design.
“You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.” -Psalm 139:1-4
He knows us way better than we know ourselves.
There is nothing wrong with a hamburger or a well made house, but I do believe there is something to be said about a church being built from the ground up. The Lord has provided every aspect for the church; the labor, the materials and ultimately the people that will one day wak through its doors.
We are in a typically rainy season in Honduras and yet it has hardly rained here. Before we got here some of the Hondurans prayed that the rain would go around us. I’ve literally seen rain clouds raining on other parts of the mountain and yet not where we are. In the beginning stages of this building process, a good rain could literally wash the church away and all our progress. Wow, thanks God.
What if we started asking bigger asks of God for His kingdom?
What if we start realizing that some prayers we’ve been praying God has already answered when we weren’t looking?
What if nothing God made was an accident?
What if we believed that God actually knows what is best for us?
