I want to share just a few of the details of a conversation I had with a friend who recently returned from a trip to Nicaragua. She spent seven days ministering to people who live in the Managua city dump (garbage dump to be more specific.) I really wish you could have been there listening. I keep replaying our conversation and realizing how much I gleaned from just one hour with her. (Imagine had I not promised to take the boys to the pool....) She shared with me that while she was walking through the city and feeling so overcome with despair, she prayed, "Please Lord, show me something beautiful in this place." Just as she raised her head, a butterfly flew right by her face. Was that a coincidence? Some might have considered it as such. (Knowing me, I would have missed the butterfly all together.) It was not. Her experience was what some refer to as "a God thing." An answer to prayer. It really made me think about how often I use the words "coincidence," "ironic," and "random." How often I must be missing "God things." As a follower of Christ, I need to understand and truly believe that nothing in my life is random, ironic or a coincidence. (No karma, Mark!:) Everything that enters my life, God is simply working out His perfect plan for me. That lead to my next question. How could living in a garbage dump in Managua, making dwellings from tin, cardboard and other materials found there be part of any "perfect plan"? Perhaps because I have been defining perfect instead of trying to understand that only God is perfection and He is the judge, not me. I would imagine that He sees the people in Managua and those right here in Wexford as equals - sinners, broken and in desperate need of His perfect love.
Beth Ann
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