It’s been almost exactly five years since our family arrived
in Chiapas, Mexico, for ten weeks of our sabbatical during the summer of 2015.
Our intent was to study Spanish at a language school in San Cristobal de las
Casas, a beautiful colonial town nestled in the mountains.
We arrived on May 10. We remember this because it was Mother’s
Day. We didn’t realize this at the time, but Mother’s Day is always on May 10 in
Mexico. And Mother’s Day is an even bigger deal in Mexico than it is in the
United States. Despite this, however, friends of Mariano and Rosy Avila met us
at the airport and welcomed us into their Mother’s Day celebration. They fed us
well, gave us our first taste of agua de sandria (watermelon water), and showed
us around the airport city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
Late in the afternoon, we headed up into the mountains to
find the house that we had rented for our time in San Cristobal. It was about
an hour away, and I still remember the first glimpse of the city as we pulled
around the bend on the mountain road and looked down into the city nestled in
the valley below. San Cristobal is a beautiful city.
It quickly became clear, however, that while our hosts traveled
frequently to San Cristobal, they were not familiar with the neighborhood where
our house was located.
Now—I like to be in control. Especially with unknowns—at least
as much as possible. So I had researched fairly thoroughly where this house
was. I had printed a map. I had written out directions—in both English and
Spanish. I had even downloaded a map onto my smartphone that gave us real-time step
by step directions.
So when our host looked at us as we pulled into the city,
clearly hoping that we knew where we were supposed to go, I looked back at him
for a moment, a little distressed that he didn’t know even the main direction
we needed to go, but then quickly pulled out my trusted smartphone app. I
started directing him down narrow roads, slowly weaving closer and closer to
our intended destination. I was even navigating an incredible maze of one-way
streets. I was feeling good about myself—that I had thought of downloading this
map app that worked even in Mexico.
We were getting close. Had made our way through downtown and
toward one of the surrounding neighborhoods. We were making our way along a
long road through a valley neighborhood of homes backed up along some farmland
when the app told us to take a sharp left. Our driver slowed and began to make
the turn, and then stopped. The road before us rose at a sixty-degree angle and
was not a road as much as it was a staircase. Rising up about four hundred feet.
No matter—there were five or six streets farther down that
could take us to our destination. Surely we’d be able to drive up one of these.
But in each case we were met with a staircase rather than a road. The house we
had rented was clearly at the top of this hill/mountain, but there was no way I
could find to get there. So much for my app—I was no longer in control.
We didn’t know it at the time, but there are only three ways
to drive into this neighborhood. Two from the back side and one from the
direction we had come. And to use this last one, you need to take just the
right combination of turns starting about a mile back from where we now found
ourselves stuck. Thankfully, our host stopped trying to listen to us, asked a
couple of people on the street, and soon made his way up this hidden access
way.
Other friends of Mariano and Rosy were already at the house
waiting there to greet us, wondering what took us so long in getting there, and
then quickly filling our cupboards with some essentials to get us started in
this new place.
Looking back now five years later, we’re still incredibly
grateful for the amazing hospitality these people showed strangers on a Mother’s
Day long ago. And we’re reminded that sometimes we think we’re in complete
control, have it all figured out and know right where to go, and then we turn a
corner in life and are met with a staircase that comes seemingly out of nowhere
and makes the way forward suddenly seem incredibly and unexpectedly hard.
The book of Job is a hard and difficult book to make sense
of. We’re left in many ways with more questions than answers. In the end,
however, after God has declined to explain to Job why all this bad stuff has
happened to him and instead essentially tells Job to trust him without knowing
the explanation, Job makes an extraordinary statement of faith: “I know that
you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). When
those staircases suddenly appear before us in life—especially those we
cannot understand or even begin to explain—and the way ahead seems
incredibly hard, it’s important to remember that God can indeed do all things,
and no purpose of God can be thwarted.
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