January 2001

Dear friends:

I sit in the plane watching Lucas, our 8-year-old, map out his strategy. The kid across the aisle has some action figures he would dearly love to borrow. He pulls out his Pokémon cards and begins to deal. Within minutes he has a new friend and new confidence. English has been the language employed. Three months ago, such an encounter would not have been possible.

We return home to Guatemala knowing in a new way that we are a bi-cultural and bi-national family. The trip also included an emergency appendectomy for Mari, two enriching months for Lucas and Benji at United Valley Christian Academy, the boys’ first trip to the snow, and more frequent flyer miles than we care to remember.

Our next interpretation assignment is scheduled for the fall of 2002. Let us know soon if you’d like to arrange a visit to your church or Presbytery.

Here is a reflection I shared in several churches this time around:

A Reflection on Ephesians 4:1-7

Life in Guatemala is not so different from life in the U.S. People hurt the same; people hope the same. Kids in our part of the world are trying to figure out the meaning of life, just like here. Average folks are trying to figure out how to make ends meet, how to deal with unexpected pain.

So Paul’s words to the Ephesians are not just poetry. To say we share one Lord, one faith, one baptism is to say we are precisely the same before God: Guatemalans and gringos equally in need of Jesus, equally gifted in grace.

Here are three challenges we face together as God’s people:

First, we are called to be a community of hope. My wife, Maribel, is a Roman Catholic. She began to work in her neighborhood as a pastoral agent when she was about 16. In her pastoral work, Mari developed the gift of listening. She allowed herself to be challenged and enriched by the lives of her neighbors.

Her neighborhood, San Martín, was even poorer back then. There were six Protestant churches, but no Catholic chapel in the community. Twice, the community had named committees to raise funds to build a church. Twice, the committee presidents, middle-aged men, had absconded with the funds and materials. The third time they elected Maribel as president. She was 18. They built that church from scratch. By hand. In the process they learned that they could be a community of hope.

We were married in that church.

Hope is the understanding that in Christ, alternatives are possible. When I, as an individual, don’t have the strength to change that which is destroying me inside, God’s grace is sufficient. And God’s people are my strength and solace.

Secondly, we are called to be a prophetic community. In the Old Testament, the prophets are not crystal-ball gazers. Rather, their skill is in discerning God’s voice and presence in their midst.

I grew up in a mission-minded church. As a young person I had numerous opportunities to do mission. Then, in college, I spent two months working at a Christian radio station in Seoul, South Korea. In each of those experiences I discovered that God, sometimes, is more present outside than inside church buildings. And that sometimes, people hide in church when they should be listening for God’s still, small voice in surprising places.

Where are people most in need? That is where God calls you to be.

I also discovered that poverty and oppression are never God’s will. As I studied the Bible with Korean university students, they said that God would energize them to bring down a military dictatorship and build a democracy. That was in 1971. And they did.

A decade later, as I studied the Bible with Guatemalan peasants, living in the midst of war, I watched and listened and prayed as they imagined new possibilities for their nation: no more impunity, no more violence, the rule of law. Step by step, that new future is being built.

Third, we are called to be a forgiving community. Forgiveness is Christ’s gift to you. It is wholly undeserved, but wholly real.

One of my jobs is to keep track of the media and try to understand their impact in our lives. If you watch carefully you can find justice, loyalty and solidarity in the media. But frequently the media proclaim that brutality, ruthlessness and betrayal are the tickets to success.

These media images only reflect what we experience day by day at work, at school, and in all too many homes.

Such a stark diet leaves us hollow, damaged. Many people have become embittered, withdrawn. Others say the best defense is a good offense and have come to glory in aggression.

This is the world in which we live today: people are hurting. People are longing to hope.

Christ’s forgiveness can be a never-ending wellspring of tenderness within us. Having been forgiven frees us to forgive. Having been forgiven frees us to serve.

Under the Mercy,

Dennis A. Smith

The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 241