Guatemala, I am told, is a geologically active region that rings the Pacific. Volcanoes are everywhere. Earthquakes are frequent. Apparently we’d been experiencing earthquakes nearly every day on our mission trip this past August. I hadn’t felt one of them.
I’ve always wanted to, but I did not want to experience an earthquake so large that people or property would be hurt. So I am picky about geological events, as if I had one ounce of control.
On one of the last days in Guatemala, I felt my first earthquake. Sitting in a third story dinning room, it gently rolled the floor and rocked the pictures hanging on the walls. How cool!
There were quakes other than ground shaking events taking place all around me, however. On this trip, I was surrounded by a team of young adults that are smart, faithful, deeply caring, confident, and wonderfully in love with life and God. The emerging Church is like an earthquake, making the ground shake under my feet. My goodness, this was so refreshing!
The people we visited and provided with assistance were experiencing quakes of their own. Babies were being fed, economic opportunities were created, peach trees were getting planted, footbol was being played, and roofs were being erected right over their heads. An adult getting fitted for a wheelchair for the first time in their life, freeing their loved one from carrying them from place to place, is an earthquake unto itself.
Prayer here quakes, rocks, and stirs the soul. It is with power. It is participatory. It is in a language I do not understand, nor need I understand. Power comes from a confidence in faith that God is working in the world to bring about a transformation in his kingdom.
Prayers are lifting up the last, the least, the lost, and the left behind. Prayers are quaking the widows, the orphans, the hungry, and sick. Prayers are a conduit for the lightening of God’s amazing grace to strike, making all things new.
These are the quakes I experience when I take part in short term mission trips. Where have you experienced God shaking up your faith?
Breaking Yokes 