BROKEN THINGS MADE NEW

For the past couple of years I lived on a short street that sort of dead-ends into a neighborhood soccer field.  There's a small store where we buy sugar or tea at times because it's located just a walk down the street from the house.  They also sell a lot of beer.

Enrique was a young man I came to know at the soccer field.  He was always there just across the street from the store; and almost always drunk.  Born with polio, his left leg was maybe six inches shorter that his right.  He also had diabetes.   And as anyone will tell you, alcohol and diabetes don't mix.  But Enrique stayed drunk through most of those first days when I met him.  And he never missed an opportunity to make loud fun of the gringo preacher guy whenever he showed up at the store.

Roughly a year after I met him, Enrique took a fall out of a bus and broke his bad leg.  This left him in a wheel chair, where he'd park himself all day begging people as they came around the field for a few pesos (to buy beer)

One afternoon, I was walking back to my house from immigration.  As I cut across the field, Enrique just stared.  It was unusual.  He usually shouted out something distasteful.  But this day, he was just sitting there under a small slice of shade in his chair, staring at my passing. 

I felt the urge to go over and talk to him but resisted it.  It was late afternoon.  I hadn't eaten and I felt, "Why risk it.  Let him be."  But my spirit convicted me that I should stop.  

I walked up to his chair and he just stared at me; the depth of his depression so thick you could almost taste it.  It may not sound very compassionate, but I went straight to the point of his problem.  "You c a n  fight God" I said.  And with my hands in my pockets, staring down at him there in the chair, I shook my head.  "But you can't win." 

I saw zero response to what I said.  It appeared he was sneering at me, and at the world, and at God all at the same time in what was surely a bitter hate.  Though it sounds real unspiritual, I was hungry.  "I gotta go Enrique" I said.  "But before I do, I'm going to pray with you.  What you need is Jesus.  It's not complicated.  Just a real fact of life.  So, if you will pray this prayer with me, God will show you that you do have a hope and a future.  He will release you from this life you now live.  That's what He does.  That's what He died on the cross to do."

With that, I bowed my head there in the street and prayed.  I prayed slowly, letting things hopefully sink in.  But arriving to my amen and looking up, I found Enrique sitting there, staring at me just as before.  I never heard him say a word.  So, excusing myself, I left.  And pretty much forgot the whole thing.

Never judge things with your natural eyes Beloved.  Just do whatever God tells you to do.  For though I didn't know it, Enrique did pray with me that afternoon.  And after I left, God continued to talk with him that day in the shade...and every day after that.

Over the course of about a month or two, Enrique disappeared from the field.  One day however, as I was standing outside of my house, he came walking down the street and up to me on crutches.  To my surprise, he wasn't in his chair.  And also to my surprise, he started talking to me like a friend and neighbor.  And to my even greater surprise, he started talking to me about "God talking to him."  In the end, he allowed me to lay hands on his leg and pray for healing.

I tremendously desired for the Lord to work a miracle in both the issue with the leg and the diabetes.  But a couple nights later on the roof where I pray, God clearly began to show me it would not be my way, but His.  Enrique needed to know Him through the Word.  And so that became my mission to a young man starving for hope.

Over the course of nearly another year, Enrique grew tremendously in the Word of God and faith.  He fell and broke his leg, again.  But he healed quickly and was never bitter.  His bitterness as a matter of fact has disappeared.  His only sadness was not being able to securely go to church.  And where in times past, Enrique walked down our little street drunk; cussing people in their yards.  Now he passes house-to-house talking about how God has changed him. 

The soccer field and the neighborhood have forever changed; and so has Enrique.  And as I passed though Santa Cruz from my travels in February, Enrique sought me out stating that he was now ready to be baptized but he wanted me to do it.  I posponed my turn-around.  And two days later using the pool of a very kind lady we know, Enrique was baptized.

Many who attended Enrique's baptism knew him, but not like I did.  Never had they heard his drunken abuse or seen his hopeless convulsing in wrath and bitterness.  Knowing what I knew however, I watched all of that ugly death go under the waters of the cross.  My abuser disappeared forever.  And in his place has risen an admirer, brother, and friend.  That is the power of the cross and Jesus' love Beloved.   And that is why I do what I do.

Thank You Lord for a new Enrique.