In some meditations on the book of Malachi this last week the Lord has laid a wonderful foundation for hopefully what this summer will look like. The last words of Yahweh before 400 years of silence till the coming of John the Baptist were these…
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Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their Fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Malachi 4:4-6)
Silence. Groaning. Tears. Then John the Baptist, Then Christ. However the part that we believe to be so apt for this summer is that God desires to take his children here in Matamoros and restore their hearts like those of the first fathers of Israel (the Patri-archs [
First Fathers]). This city is large it houses almost a million image-bearing human
be-ings. Many families are broken with most if not all its members working in incredibly low-paying jobs just to survive. The average annual income is $5,000 or ($100/week). The lowest paid full time job legally allowed in the US makes $10,000 a year. Young and old stand in the street intersections juggling tomatillos looking for anyone or anything that can help them out.
It is in the midst of this that we desire to display the glory of Immanuel (God-
With-Us). We don’t desire for them to become like Americans but simply to live the way God intended humans to exist. We want to put on display the ravishing love of Christ that can restore and heal all the brokenness in their lives. We long that the people here might turn away from a religion of superstition and idolatry and worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the apostles that have gone before us. It is in this spirit that we have changed some things around regarding the schedule so we might be in a greater position to serve and love than ever before. In the mornings we will be doing devotions, worship, and some team prep time before we head out to the colonias in the afternoon. We will have two ministry sessions with dinner squeezed between before we head back in the late evening. Upon coming back to the Gateway (our ministry headquarters) we will do some debriefing and marvel at how our mysterious beautiful God has worked throughout the day.
We cannot do this alone though. We need your prayers and we need your bodies. It is the miracle of the circumcision of the heart that we pray for. May God grant us His grace and eyes to see what He is up to here. He is not silent and because of that we love to press forward.
