God is working

I’ll be honest, running in Cotacachi, Ecuador is not my favorite activity. It’s not just that my lungs protest the altitude (almost 8,000 ft). It’s also that the sidewalks are minefields—chock-full of unruly plants, dangerously varied bricks, and furry vagabonds (okay, stray dogs). And if the sun doesn’t kill you, the rush-hour traffic exhaust will.

Hyperbole aside, sometimes it’s very hard to peel off the blankets early enough to beat the sun in time for a comfortable jog. Saturday, December 26, 2020 was one of those mornings. We had snoozed the alarm too many times, only to have responsibilities yank us out of bed and right past the running shoes. My husband and I postponed our jog to about 5:30 pm—an hour before sunset, and an hour and a half before our pre-Sunday church worship practice. 


It seemed like it was all working out.


But we only made it about a mile and a half.


Gratefully chugging down a hill on the main street, I glimpsed an upset young woman at the bottom, standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Distressed people on sidewalks aren't unusual in this city, but this was different. Plastic bags of belongings were scattered at her feet, and her shaking hands lightly cupped her mask-wrapped chin as her body pulsed with sobs. People skirted around her, clearly wondering but not asking. Robotically, I passed her by a few steps...and stopped. The biblical parable of the Good Samaritan flashed through my mind; I strongly sensed God was asking me not to be one of the bystanders. My husband, running in front, had also paused and was looking back at me. “We have to ask her what’s wrong,” I said. 


“Are you okay?” my husband asked first. "No," she sobbed.

"What happened?"

"They treated me badly.” 

 

Clearly traumatized, she didn't even seem to want attention, but we weren't going to leave her alone in this state. Little by little, we convinced her that we were safe people. We would help her.


As her story untangled thread by thread, we learned more about this 21-year-old woman, Lucia*. She had been working in Quito, but over the weekend she wanted to visit her family. Hitching a ride with four men she knew from work had seemed cost-effective. But her free ride had soon turned into a nightmare, as they were all drunk. They had frightened and assaulted her in the van before basically dumping her on the sidewalk, still about 45 minutes from the community where her family lived. “I feel dirty,” she said more than once, through uncontrollable tears.


As my husband and I tried to comfort this woman, I felt anger rising inside. This kind of abuse is more frequent in Ecuador (and many other places in the world) than I’d like to think about. Part of the problem is many people, like Lucia, are too scared of community repercussions to report it. Where is the justice? Why does God not do something?


But then my thoughts were silenced as I realized, God did do something. It wasn't an accident that I was standing there. God had sent my husband and I along at exactly the right time. He prevented Lucia from experiencing even more physical harm. It isn't God's fault that humans are selfish and make bad decisions and hurt each other. Psalm 34:18 is something that I cling to over and over: "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." Where there is suffering, God is near. According to Romans 8, He is somehow masterfully weaving all the hurt and selfishness and questions into his ultimate tapestry of Good. A Good that I can't comprehend right now, but that will eventually outweigh the sufferings of this present time in an incomparable way (Romans 8:18, 28).


As we walked with Lucia back to our apartment, she said, “I had been waiting for something to come along to help me.” It reinforced what God had been showing me. After giving her some water and food, we helped her get home to her family that night. We emphasized that it wasn't her fault and that God cared for her. Although we encouraged her to press charges, she didn't want to. She didn’t even want to tell her family, let alone the police.


We stayed in contact for a few days and made sure she was safe. She didn't go back to her job, and instead went to Colombia with her siblings to try to work. Then, months of silence.


Even though we stopped hearing from her, I could not get her out of my mind. We prayed for Lucia, and we prayed some more. I wanted so much for her to clearly hear about how much Jesus loved her. I couldn't take away her pain, but I knew a Friend who could. Even if she couldn’t change the past, she could find peace with God for the future.


Although Lucia had claimed she just wanted to “just forget about it,” as with many traumatic experiences, the effects lingered. March 26, 2021, exactly three months after that day we found her on the sidewalk, I received a WhatsApp message from Lucia. God had been working! She had struggled with picking up the pieces in her line of work after that situation, and she needed some help in different forms.


We arranged for her to visit us to talk in person. And by some miracle, she was sitting on our couch in our apartment a few evenings later.


We helped her with some practical needs, and then my husband kindly asked Lucia about her greatest spiritual need: the need for a relationship with her Creator through Jesus Christ. I sat next to Lucia as we looked through the pages of scripture. Lucia understood that Jesus had existed as a man and died on a cross, but not why. She didn't understand that Jesus was God himself, sinless but dying for our sins. We looked at Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."  The contrast between our own guilt before a holy God and its consequences and the sacrifice of God himself to satisfy those consequences completely is startling, when you think about it. Lucia admitted that it would be unfair of a judge to pardon the men who had ill-treated her (if prosecuted), but even more crazy if the innocent judge decided to fulfill the sentence of the men in their place. What radical love of a Savior who would forgive the very people torturing him (Luke 23:34).

 After reading many passages from the book of John, Lucia understood that when Jesus said "It is finished" on the cross, He meant it. Her sin debt had been paid in full, and this peace with God, this passing from death to life, was offered freely as a gift. She just had to accept it.


Lucia left us that night with her own new Bible in hand and a smile on her face. While not all her problems are gone in this life, she had found peace with God through Jesus Christ, and that is something I am thankful for.


"He heals the brokenhearted

    and binds up their wounds.

He determines the number of the stars;

    he gives to all of them their names.

Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;

    his understanding is beyond measure." 

(Psalm 147:3-5)


*name changed for privacy

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