I sat upon a bench at 6:00am in Downtown Matamoros with my fellow teammates wondering how on earth I had come to this place. I knew that God had called us as His disciples to leave everything and follow in the ways of His Son but, I did not know what that would look like or where I would go from there. The verse “”Then [Jesus] said to them all: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23) haunted my thoughts and my prayers. What did it mean, what does it look like to deny ourselves? And then it hit me; this is not my story.
Martin, David and Miguel: 3 young boys living in a neighborhood of deep poverty and few jobs. David and Miguel sat in their half constructed house, trying to build it into a home while their dad was at work. A simple game of Go Fish will bring them joy and laughter that no amount of money can buy.
Josephine: the grandmother of a baby named Christian who had been in the hospital for 8 months with heart problems. The families are not allowed to stay inside the hospital so the family sleeps outside waiting for and hoping for the miracle of healing that is so desperately needed.
Alejandro and Tito: two men sitting at a bus stop waiting for an opportunity for work so that they can make just enough money to be reunited with their wives and small children whom they have not seen for months.
Our Ejido Buenos Aries Host Families: a simple community that has little but needs little. A community that gives generously what little they have and delights only in the Lord. They live their lives simply, praising God simply because He is God and because they have good health.
This day is not my own, it is not for the sake of my discipline or my sacrifices but it is for the sake of being a servant and feeding the hungry. Every day, we gave someone food and every day we fed the hungry; we cried with them, we laughed with them, and we prayed for them. I wish you could have been there. I wish you could have seen their faces, heard their voices but most of all I wish you could have felt the power of the Spirit moving and working through our simple acts of obedience. If I could put into words the unexplainable, if somehow you could experience the unimaginable then maybe we could open our eyes to see that our lives are not for our own benefit. Experiencing this, I came to a realization of what it means to deny ourselves.
To deny ourselves for the sake of Christ is to deny any expectations for our lives; we give our whole selves to Him so that we might expect everything and nothing at the same time and therefore we live by faith that God is bigger than our understanding. So then we must deny ourselves to the comfort of the rights we claim to have, to the expectations and plans that we have for God to work in us, to what we think we need, to what we think we desire. We must deny any understanding that we might have of our God. Instead, we must place ourselves last for the sake of the Lord so that we may feed those who are hungry and serve those He puts in our path. He calls us not to consume the fruits that our spirit has produced, but to bear good fruit in order to strengthen and give life to the body of Christ (John 15:1-10). Christ gives us life to share and when we give our all for the Kingdom of God that is when we are fed.
The whole week, God used this next passage to turn my world upside down. At the beginning of this adventure, I came to God with my sacrifices hoping to be humbled and to bow down in submission to God and don’t get me wrong I did, but then I read this and found myself asking: how does my submission and humility bring God glory; what can He do if I simply lay at His feet? I lay down everything at His feet so that He can use me to glorify Him. Our job as disciples is to serve His Kingdom; to bring Him glory. A day acceptable to the Lord is day that His Kingdom grows and is glorified.
“Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” (Isaiah 58: 5-11)
