Colombia didn’t need me. I needed Colombia. The people here who I thought were nothing like me, I came to find were everything like me. Lonely people that just want love. Each Wednesday night our team and the people of Ciudad Refugio would walk through the streets among the people who are homeless and struggle with severe addictions. This place is what they call the Bronx.
To step into the Bronx is to step into the most hopeless of places. People are without a home, without food, without water. But even more devastating is people are without hope for themselves. They lack faith in themselves that they are worthy of love, worthy of a home. A home that won’t judge them, where they can be themselves, take off their masks and trust the people around them to love them even more when truth is revealed.
It was amongst the broken spirit that I saw the light, God’s compassion moving. It wasn’t a place of despair, it was a place of grace. A place where people are being called to a better life. People were able to receive without expectation of paying back or earning what they had been given. They only had to receive the bread, the agua panela, and receive the directions if they choose. It was a place of trust that God will get them there and trust that we are people of our word and will be waiting to love them the second they walk through the open doors. A place where God was offering a fresh start because he makes us a new creation. A place of healing as prayers are being cast out. The street became a church because the church isn’t the building it’s his people and we got to be his people bringing kingdom where we walked. What is bringing kingdom? Bringing kingdom is bringing Jesus. What is bringing Jesus? It’s bringing love.
