A letter from Ellen Sherby in Nicaragua
July 24, 2007
Dear Friends,
As I write here in my office at CEPAD on a narrow, busy Managua street I can hear the rain drumming on the metal roof—one of my favorite sounds, especially in houses with no drop-ceiling. We’re having a seasonal rain shower, washing the houses and streets, cleaning out the sky. The smell of water is so good.
God’s grace comes to us in showers, in bursts, too, which like the applause of raindrops drumming on the roof, surprises us.
A few weeks ago I swung through a Shell station to put gas in the car. Everything is full-service here (in fact, they look at you funny if you try to do it yourself). I rolled down the window and asked the attendant to fill up the tank, and when I paid him he began speak with me about Jesus Christ. He even handed me two religious tracts—one, the Gospel of John, and the other a more general pamphlet about salvation.
I was stunned that a gas station attendant should preach to me. His courage to share the Gospel, probably at the risk of losing his job, left me thinking about evangelism and how (or whether) I evangelize at all.
It’s not so easy for me to preach to others about the Christian faith. I enjoy reflecting on faith issues with others and gleaning new insights from the Bible, but I’m not very good at talking with people about God’s salvation in the person of Jesus Christ. Why? I think it’s partly because those who are really good at preaching about God’s salvation often come across as judgmental, and their vision of salvation is usually limited to spiritual life—not the integral, whole salvation (body and soul) that I feel that the Bible offers us, and which requires more of us as God’s creation.
How do we understand salvation? How do we read the Bible in the United States and apply God’s saving grace and “life in abundance” to our daily lives? How can and should we spread this good news with others?
Jesus came to give us life, and He meant for us to “have it abundantly” (John 10:10b). I firmly believe this is not a theology about having our wildest material dreams fulfilled, but of having our spiritual and physical needs met. Through this gospel mandate, I believe God also calls each of us to live our lives in ways that are life-giving to others. In other words, this salvation—this abundant life—is not just for me but is God’s hope for all humankind. It is overwhelming to try to live out this gospel when we see people whose basic needs are not being met, but I believe it’s necessary to try to do it.
I am constantly challenged to reflect on how much is enough, on how much I really need to live. On Sundays at church I worship with people in Barrio Hialeah—a marginalized neighborhood in south-central Managua—and learn about the daily struggle to survive. I talk with Yahania, whose baby Raquel was recently suffering from chronic malnutrition (at eight months she weighed eleven pounds). I see Jenny who—along with her five children—was living in a tiny, roofless house because Jenny’s partner, in a fit of anger, removed the tin roofing to build his own shack at the back of their patio. During the service we pray for those who are chronically ill, for the unemployed, and those living in situations of violence.
My husband Elmer and I worked with others to get much-needed infant formula and a simple crib for Raquel and adequate roofing for Jenny and her family. It’s not much; the needs are ever-present and there are no quick fixes to poverty.
Like the young man at the gas station—but not directly—Yahania and Jenny evangelize to me as we sing, pray, and share our needs together. In the same way, I hope that our church can bring just a little bit of God’s good news to them by listening and by caring enough to garner some kind of response to some of their most felt needs.
On occasion, folks from the United States will ask me what “religious” work I do as a mission co-worker. I think they want to know if I am building churches or preaching on the streets of Managua. I’m not ordained as a pastor, and I don’t preach very often, but I believe I can work as a minister to others by how I try to live my life—and that I can share the gospel message not only through words but through actions. This is something that we all can do, wherever we are: act in ways both large and small to make God’s salvation more real to people who are far from experiencing “life in abundance.” At the same time, we must let ourselves be evangelized to by people around us—especially those whose lives are so different from our own that we find it hard to connect with them. There is potential for these gospel-moments to happen all the time, every day, even in unexpected ways.
With Hope,
Ellen
The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 58
