Beauty in the Desert

At the beginning of our trip to Peru we journeyed south to Ica, a town located in the desert. It is a very dry place with areas of extreme poverty. A little over year and a half ago, an earthquake struck the area creating even more problems...people without homes, children without parents....

We passed out water in an neighborhood that only receives a water truck once a week. Not everyone gets their share of water. One woman said that she had not had water in almost a month. She had two children and her husband was sick.

Many of the people came up to the truck with any kind of bucket they could find.

The water truck told the truth: El agua es vida.....water is life. But, perhaps Jesus says it even better: Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:13-14

"Water s life"

Any bucket they could find

Students helped carry the water back to the people's houses.

Something else stood out in this community: even though there was extreme poverty, the people still took the time to plant flowers and enjoy their beauty.

I love this quote from Hinds Feet on High Places.

On the last morning she was walking near the tents and huts of the desert dwellers, when in a lonely corner behind a wall she came upon a little golden-yellow flower, growing all alone. An old pipe was one tiny hole through which came an occasional drop of water. Where the drops fell one by one, there grew the little golden flower, though where the seed had come from, Much-Afraid could not imagine, for there were no birds anywhere and no other growing things [in this great desert].

She stopped over the lonely, lovely little golden face, lifted up so hopefully and so bravely to the feeble drip, and cried out softly, “What is your name, little flower, for I never saw one like you before.”

The tiny plant answered at once in a tone as golden as itself, “Behold me! My name is Acceptance-with-Joy.”

Much-Afraid thought of the things which she had seen in the pyramid: the threshing floor and the whirring wheel and the fiery furnace. Somehow the answer of the little golden flower which grew all alone in the waste of the desert stole into her heart and echoed there faintly but sweetly, filling her with comfort. She said to herself, “He has brought me here when I did not want to come for his own purpose. I, too, will look up into his face and say, ‘Behold me! I am thy little handmaiden Acceptance-with-Joy.’”

A home in the desert.

Yet, there is still beauty.....a promise of things to come and the hope and longing for something better, things as they should be, a world lost, but soon to come again

Isaiah 35: 1-2, 4-7, 10

The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus,

² it will burst into bloom;
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.

⁴ say to those with fearful hearts,
"Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you."

⁵ Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

⁶ Then will the lame leap like a deer,
and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert.

⁷ The burning sand will become a pool,
the thirsty ground bubbling springs.

¹⁰ and the ransomed of the LORD will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.