matthew 7:25

May 28, 2008

The bus picked me up. 7:02. As always. I climbed aboard, sat on the third seat. Left hand side. Music on. Another day. But the ride was different. The view changed. We passed three landslides. Trees uprooted, mud, grass and boulders lying in piles on the street. Houses leaning toward the valley. Their foundations moved toward disaster.

By this afternoon there were so many slides that traffic was rerouted and it took nearly an hour to get home. I found myself near tears at the thought of it. The familiarity of that sliding foundation. That moving earth. The need to reroute and find another way.

See, I think that’s how I ended up in Colombia. I’d settled in, like those houses on the mountainside. I’d found my spot, my secure place and built a house on it. It was comfortable with pretty flower beds and a porch swing and the weather promised all sunny skies ahead.

And then it rained, and rained, and rained. And the ground got muddy and the topsoil slid away, running down Maple Drive toward the point of least resistance. A pile of rocks and plans and dirt lying in the street. My rocks, my plans, my dirt. My shifting foundation.

I stood and stared at the mess for a bit before it came to me. Unsure of what it meant. Hoping it didn’t mean what I thought it meant. But it did. It does. And I’m in the middle of my detour. My way around the landslide. I’m where I’m supposed to be, where God’s called me to be. Among the rubble, the orphaned, the poor. Among the different, the difficult, the strange. Where there are earthquakes and volcanoes and landslides that rock the foundation of this country and wreck my heart for its people. Where my foundation is finally The Rock upon which I stand.

” The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock.”

-Matthew 7:25

Posted in colombia, faith