Leaning

The night before we left to return to the children’s home for Christmas, our host family gave us a gift. Sandra (the mother in the family) prefaced the gift by saying that she knew it was a bit strange, but that it had special significance. Then she handed us this cane, pictured below. She explained that she bought it from a man in his 80’s who lives several miles outside of town. He goes up into the mountains looking for pieces of wood that will make good canes, then sands them down and comes into Antigua walking the streets, trying to sell them for 15 quetzales (or about $2) each. I’m pretty sure this guy doesn’t have any power sanders at his disposal, so the amount of work represented in each $2 cane is pretty significant- especially for a man in his 80’s. We happened to see him in town while Kara’s parents were here and got this picture of him.

Sandra explained to us that she wanted the cane to remind us of Moses, and the staff that God gave him as assurance that he would not be alone in leading the Israelites out of Egypt. She said that she wanted us to have the cane so that when rough times come along, we can remember to depend on the Lord in the same way as Moses.

For us the cane was a powerful symbol of why the Lord has brought us here. As we’ve written about before, one of our big motivations in coming was to learn to live more dependently on the Lord. Since receiving the gift, I have been thinking a lot about the image of leaning on the Lord and depending on Him to hold us up. We want to lean on Him more and more in how we live and minister every day among these kids, so much so that we can experience life and ministry as God’s friends, like Moses did.

Muchas gracias to the Oviedo-Soto family and an old Guatemalan from the mountains for a tangible reminder of why we’re here.