Encuentro

Hello,

Last post I talked a little about how my experience with blindness has taught me to see clearly.  In keeping with this theme, another lesson I continue to learn is how my presumptions prevent me from seeing clearly.  It is difficult to see the young woman when you’re looking at the old one (http://www.coolopticalillusions.com/optical_illusions_images_2/young_woman2.htm).

At 4:00 on Saturday afternoon we arrived at Avivando El Fuego church in Jocotenango to leave for an Encuentro.  The church holds an Encuentro once a month and the theme of this one was “Breaking Chains.”  Of our group of twelve, six chose to go to receive and the other six chose to serve by praying, helping in the kitchen and wherever else help was needed.  In total there were eight Guatemalans and six Canadians who went to receive and an equal number who went to serve. I was with the latter.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see at a Guatemalan church retreat devoted to breaking chains in the lives of those going.  I don’t know what I was expecting from a church retreat where there were at least as many people coming to pray and minister as there were individuals to be ministered to.  But that God was going to work could only be expected when those going to minister prepared with days of fasting and full nights spent in prayer.

Somewhere in the gospels Jesus concludes a discussion with the Pharisees by saying, “But wisdom is known by her children.”  He was answering the charge of being “a glutton and a drunkard” by conducting his ministry by having dinner with the prostitutes, drunkards and tax-collectors.  When it comes to judging the ministries of the church, it seems best to judge them only by their fruit.  For reality can prove a theory; but a theory can never prove reality.

I recalled that quip of Jesus last night at I heard the testimonies of those people at church immediately after getting off the bus which took the group of us from San Luis, the location of the Encuentro, back to the church in Jocotenango because many of the methods used by the leaders at this Encuentro were so weird to me that I was having a real struggle to discern their goodness.

There’s no need for me to elaborate on these methods which were so foreign to my ear, eye, and mind.  You can ask me about them in person.  It is sufficient to say that they accomplished their end for nearly all of the individuals who went to break chains saw their chains broken.  Who am I, who knows very little of the chains which sin, past physical and emotional abuse and spiritual oppression can forge in an individual’s life, to judge the methods? It would be tantamount to me judging the methods of a doctor without knowledge of medicine and the patient.  The fruit was that every one who claimed to have chains broken in their lives praised God for it; praise God!

Miss you all!

Steven