Through Broken Eyes July 18, 08

A few years ago, I went with a team on a church mission trip to Mexico to help build casitas (little houses) for an impoverished family.

Ranging in ages from babies to adults, the family consisted of about 14 people (15 if you counted a petite, pregnant 14-year-old who still looked very much like a baby herself) all living in one cluttered room with a dirt floor. They had no heat in the winter or air conditioning in the summer. Their makeshift kitchen was a tiny, rundown stove in a dilapidated shed next to the house and their bathroom was an outhouse with a hole in the ground.

Compared to the one room in which they’d all been living, the casita we built them, which was probably about the size of an average contemporary master bedroom, was a mansion.

I had never been on a mission trip before and had no idea what to expect. The squalor of what I saw affected me deeply. Seeing and playing with the little unkempt children on the street who had no shoes and watching their eyes light up whenever we sang songs with them about Jesus or gave them candy or some small trinket touched me in a way I hadn’t expected.

The family we ministered to was very poor and yet, on our last day, they cooked us a wonderful meal of tortillas and beans that I will never forget not only because it tasted so good but because they’d pooled together their last bit of money to buy the food that fed us. Yet they were so happy, so grateful to share the little with us they had. It made me cry.

It also made me realize how truly blessed I was and how I had taken so much for granted.

Through their simple act of unselfishness, that family taught me something. And I realized that even though I had originally gone to give them something, they had inadvertently ended up giving me something.

The minister became the ministered.

That scenario happened again the other day when I was asked to sing at a Bible study for a group of incarcerated women housed in a lock-up facility for inmates who, as part of their probation sentence, are undergoing rehabilitation for drug and alcohol-related crimes.

As with the Mexico trip, I had never ministered to anyone in jail or prison before and had no idea what to expect. My ministry is still very new, only a few months old, and God is slowly but steadily opening doors for me through which I can minister. As a former police reporter, I had been to the police station on many occasions and even made a few trips to the jail to gather information for stories but I’d never been any further than the front desk.

Now I was on the inside of what pretty much amounted to a jail, actually standing before a small group of women who, unlike myself, couldn’t simply walk out the door when the Bible study was over.

I had originally been asked to sing one song at the start of the study time. After I sang, I could leave if I wanted or I could stay for the rest of the Bible study. There was a Christian open mike jam happening at a church I wanted to get to, so my plan was to sing my song, maybe speak a little word of encouragement to the ladies the Lord had given me for them and leave. I was going to do this new thing called ministry and make a quiet exit.

Funny how the Holy Spirit works. The minute I stepped into that room and began to set up to sing, I started to get the sense that God had other plans.

I ended up singing three songs, all the songs I had, and as I sang, each time I locked eyes with those ladies (there were about 12 of them all seated on chairs and sofas around me in an semi-circle) and saw how the Spirit of God was speaking to them through the music…how their eyes welled with tears and the naked pain, anguish and despair they felt began to surface on their faces, it made me start to cry and I had to catch myself. In an effort to keep my composure, I tried to look straight ahead, close my eyes or look at the ceiling but it was too late. The tears of those women had seared my heart, leaving an indelible impression.

When I looked at them, I saw myself. The pain they felt was my pain. I recognized their teary countenances because my face had once carried that same teary expression.

Their brokenness was familiar because it was also mine.

I got through the songs, although my voice broke a couple of times.

After the songs, I decided to stay for the rest of the Bible study. During the discussion, one of the girls, whom I later found out never cries, broke down and began to sob uncontrollably. Another one of the women went over to her and warmly put her arms around her. Before she’d started crying, the girl had been talking about how she’d known the Lord as a child but had strayed away when she got older. She talked of letting the light within her burn out and how, before she repented, she’d thought God had abandoned her and didn’t love her. It might as well have been me talking.

As the discussion continued, it seemed the overall concern for these women, most of whom were new Christians, was wrapping their minds around the fact that God loved them in spite of themselves and that even though they weren’t living this new Christian existence perfectly, God was willing to forgive. But I keep messing up, they would all say. And God still forgives me??? He still loves me???

The answer, of course, was ‘yes.’

During my singing and even after when we were all seated around the table talking, as my eyes scanned the faces of each woman, some older and quite a few young, I didn’t see criminals. I didn’t see alcoholics. I didn’t see drug addicts. I only saw broken, hurting, wounded women who wanted desperately to hear and know there was a God who loved them unconditionally…that despite whatever they’d done to end up in that lock-up and despite how others may see them or how they’d been branded, they were worth something in the sight of God.

I saw them through the eyes of the Spirit and I realized that I was just like them. Even though I’d never been in an actual prison, before I turned to Jesus, I had been in prison all right. Only my bars had been invisible. My heart went out to these ladies because we shared a kinship: pain, anguish, guilt, shame. All the brokenness that registered on their faces had been (and still is) my brokenness.

Psalm 34:18-”The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit.”

Psalm 51:17-”The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart— These, O God, You will not despise.”

Those women taught me something. Never again will I simply look at a person behind bars or living on the street, smugly dismiss them and think, “Well, they’re just a drunk or a dopehead that needs to get their act together!”

There but for the grace of God, that person could have been me. And it could STILL become me if I’m not careful. Pride is a deadly, tricky thing. I don’t think anyone wakes up in the morning and consciously decides to become an addict.

The devil is a liar.

He lied to that young girl who didn’t believe she was any good or that God loved her just as he’d lied to me in the same way. But praise God:

“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me,
      Because the LORD has anointed Me
      To preach good tidings to the poor;
      He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
      To proclaim liberty to the captives,
      And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
       2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD,
      And the day of vengeance of our God;
      To comfort all who mourn,
       3 To console those who mourn in Zion,
      To give them beauty for ashes,
      The oil of joy for mourning,
      The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
      That they may be called trees of righteousness,
      The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.” ~Isaiah 61:1-3

I hear God saying, “I got you out of prison, now you go and do for others what I did for you.”

I saw a lot of unmined diamonds in that lock-up; I intend to go back and help them discover their luster.

Before I left, I made a point to go up to that girl who’d broken down earlier. I felt led to tell her God wasn’t looking for her to be perfect, He just wants her to seek Him.

As I spoke the words, I got the feeling that message was also meant for me.

I’m pretty sure it was.