I've Seen it All

I write this letter from paradise.  Sitting in a beautiful hotel room, looking out over three pools, and a very expensive golf course, getting ready to go to a private, pristine beach.  It's been a long few days for Lauren and I.  I feel like I've seen all that the Prophet Jeremiah wrote about in today's Ashes to Fire passage (Jer. 5:1-9).  

We spent a long day in the hectic, chaotic, sometimes depressing world that is the airport.  People came and went, hustling and bustling, ignoring, lusting, rejoicing, mourning, but always hurrying, always trying to get to where they "need to be," never thinking of others.  Conveniently, they carried their gods with them on their journey.  Gods named Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, Laptop, Netbook, Dulce & Gabana, Coach, Prada, Samsonite, and sometimes a fashionable cross on their neck.  (I'm writing this from my iPad....) 
We stayed for two days and nights with the Church of the Nazarene's missionaries here, at their lovely home, with their modest possessions, sharing in their rich (in ways that really matter) life. 
We visited two very poor communities and our churches there. 
We met amazing pastors and lay people.  One pastor walks 45 minutes each way to her church twice each day (two round trips) just so that she can care for the children in the impoverished community.  Another has built a very modest school building on the back of his church, in which they teach and minister to almost 100 kids each and every day all through the year.  Around 30 of these kids are sponsored through NCM child sponsorships...the others are still in need of sponsorships. We were welcomed into the warm, inviting home of a DS who was eager to have our church partner with a church on his district.  They cooked for us - a feast of a lunch!  

We saw the poor and we have seen the rich.  I've seen the unfaithful, and I've seen "one person who acts justly and seeks truth."  I've seen the lion, the wolf, and the leopard - I've also seen the lamb.  I've seen the houses of prostitutes (from the outside of course!).  In this place, over the last few days, I think I've seen it all.  

During Lent we reflect upon our sinfulness.  Sin is, after all, the great equalizer.  In the faces of all I've seen, as well as the face I see in the mirror, I've seen sin.  In the words of Scripture Lauren and I read together this morning, I read and felt judgement.  If you were honest with yourself, then you did too.  And yet, I'm reminded of the one thing that makes us all even more equal, the one thing that trumps and is more real than even sin: grace.  By the grace of the Father, made known to the world in the Son Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, grace has come into the world!  Now and forevermore, grace is the most real thing thing that exists!  Amen!  

You, no doubt, know judgement and condemnation, but do you know grace?  Do you know grace today?  Jesus tells us to stop searching for it, even in the Scriptures (this means the Old Testament, for when He said this, the only "Scriptures" there were, were what we now refer to as the Old Testament) and to instead be found out by it - to be found by him!  In the words of Charles Wesley, "Amazing love, how can it be?  That oh, my God, it found out me!"  

Grace can find you anywhere, but there are places and situations where you will be more receptive to it.  I believe the Dominican Republic is one of those places.  I hope you'll get the chance to come here soon to experience it for yourself.  

I've seen it all, and no matter how dark things might get, no matter how pervasive sin may be, grace is greater still.