Silence

My week in Mexico was quite different from the others…it was, in one word, humbling. As the sole member who has no Spanish background, the language barrier was a continual struggle for me all week. I loved being there and playing with the kids but it is so frustrating to only know a few phrases. Virtually no one at the orphanage spoke any English (there were only 2 people I met all week who spoke English!) so it was a very silent week for me…smiles and hugs were my primary means of communication. It was a good lesson on my inadequacy. Even the soccer games we played with the kids were humbling! Those five year olds got game, much more than me!

Still, the one time during the week when I didn’t mind not understanding words was when we were in the kitchen doing dishes and we started singing “Jesus Loves Me” and other worship songs along with a few of the older girls—they in Spanish and we in English. God bridges those gaps of inadequacy for us and fills in voids that are impossible for us to fill on our own, transcending even our earthly means of communication. This quote from “The Revolutionary Communicator” which describes the importance of seeking solitude says that “we long for words that call to us above the cyclone of trivial pursuits, noise, and technologies, wooing us toward something deeper, richer, higher. We ache for a calling deserving of our sacrifice, for pursuits worthy of passion. In a word, we hunger for vision.” During this week without virtually any communication, I was able to see the power of God’s love for His ‘least of these.’ The vision is truly to love one another regardless of dialect, race, economic status, etc. It is a calling that is preached often but easily overlooked in our daily lives which are inundated with the roar of mindless communication and distracting technology. In the midst of their poverty and their absence of an earthly parent to love them, joy was found on the face of every one of those children at the orphanage—a good reminder of the strength of our Father’s love for each of His children and our calling as Christians to continually display it.

Kelly