November 29, 2007

Dear Friends,

Micah reminds his listeners that what the Lord requires of us is: “To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.” 

At the end of the year and a full load of activities we are reminded of this and challenged again and again to put beliefs into action.

Upon further reflection, we know that God’s grace for all of humanity means that God’s love is for all of us, and that it doesn’t matter how much or how little we have done to deserve it. The fact that we are forgiven over and over again is an act of mercy that we receive even despite our shortcomings. The good part is that we are also given new opportunities again and again. Often we don’t know what God would have us do in a certain situation or simply we don’t do enough, coming up short. We wonder how we know if we’ve done enough, since there is no measuring stick for this kind of thing.

In the Gospel of Matthew (25:34-40) Jesus tells us that we will be at one with him when we give food and drink to the hungry, hospitality to the homeless, clothing to the naked, and when we visit the sick and the prisoner.

Don Cruz and Tim Wheeler.

My thoughts take me to a five-day mission trip in a poor Maya-Chorti community. I worked with some others helping Don Cruz build his house. Don Cruz is a very patient, humble human being. The lines on his face tell of a life difficult beyond my understanding. The Maya-Chorti are direct descendants of the Mayans. When the classical civilization fell in the ninth century, the people did not vanish; they simply dispersed to the surrounding mountains and lived a subsistence life for centuries. Later, they lost their land to colonizers in the 1800s, eventually ending up in a semi-feudal, sharecropping type of existence on large haciendas. Nothing much changed until the 1990s, when they became organized and recognized as an indigenous ethnic group and began demanding their rights to land. This culminated in a sit-in by thousands at congress. The government agreed to buy land to distribute to them, which they eventually did—although the land is marginal agricultural land. New communities are being built on this promised land in different locations.

It is within this setting that Don Cruz was building his own house for the first time in his life with the support of PC(USA) mission teams and Heifer Honduras. He was glad for the assistance. We turned sand and cement into walls and supporting columns. The mercy we received was dished out regularly as we waned under the hot sun and slacked off on passing blocks. The biggest compliment I got from Don Cruz was when he said he wouldn’t redo the part of the wall where I had laid the block; he would always remember it as my part of the wall. He invited me to celebrate the new house by eating tamales at Christmas. Again, I was to be at the receiving end instead of giving, something that happens to us so often in our efforts to help others.

As we left the village on the last day, we came to the bridge spanning the Copan River. The pastor asked us to have a moment of reflection and closure. She told us to meditate and to literally repent by turning around to see what was behind us. There we saw the village nestled under the mountains. We knew what we are called to do by God—to be at one with the poor, the hungry, and the homeless, and indeed this is what we were trying to do. Maybe we came up short in some ways, but I am sure we will get new opportunities to try again, and in so doing come a little closer to fulfilling God’s will. Mission work doesn’t have to be a one-shot effort. I started thinking of adding on to previous efforts. This was helpful to me, theologically.

In this never-ending journey the expressions of friendship and the building of a community help us to become one with others and with ourselves, as God would like. Maybe in a small way we can do justice by lifting up the dreams of those who so desperately need it with small acts in which we receive the love of those who are truly walking humbly. We are sure that the coming year will provide us many new opportunities.

We give thanks at this time of year and at this place in our journey—for the opportunity that we have, for the beauty of the surrounding world, and the people that we have the privilege of knowing.

Thank you for responding to the call of Mission 2007, and for your ongoing support and prayers for us. May 2008 bring us a little bit closer to the world envisioned by what the Lord requires of us.

Merry Christmas,

Tim and Gloria Wheeler

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.59