Transfiguration

“The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:” Lamentations 3:19-21.

The Augustinian Lutheran Church “St. John the Baptist” on the day of the Transfiguration of our Lord presented a play they had put together about the massacre that they had lived through in their own flesh for the delegation from Easter Lutheran Church.

The women still knew how to run for their lives when faced with gunfire. They still knew how to fall at full speed in order to try to protect the babies on their backs. They still knew how the soldiers piled up the bodies in the church… and even set some paper on fire in the church to make it a little more real. They knew how to tie people up and how to kidnap a child. The babies cried, frightened and not knowing that it was only a recreation.

God has truly transfigured the pain of these people. It has not been erased. The scars are still visible and some wounds are still open. However, in the midst of hearing about what they had suffered in the flesh and seeing the depth of the pain in eyes blank with grief… a word of hope was spoken.

“We have found the place where we will die”.

They were the first to return to Guatemala in the murmurings of peace but the last to receive a place to resettle. The land they received was far from their land of origin. It was not good farmland, and especially not good for the farming they had practiced before the exile. It was for cattle, but they had none. The land had hardly any trees or water. Their community had slowly been meshed with others until they had to speak Spanish instead of their native language in order to communicate with their new neighbors-- with whom they would either make life or not. The promised land was not as wonderful as they had dreamed it would be all those years in exile. They could not even afford to get themselves to the land a few hours away. Struggle continued to keep fresh the bitter taste in their mouths.

Padre Horacio paid for four trucks to bring them to the land promised them. Somehow they found the will to continue to struggle and to apply for government loans for cattle so that they could make a life waiting years to receive any sort of answer.

As we celebrated the Transfiguration of our Lord in February 2007, we were gathered in the newly built church. Every family had gathered sticks to put up the walls so that the cattle would not loll in the church any more… for Christmas the nativity manger could very well have been in their lowly shelter. Now the church had walls and a hand made door, altar, and church benches. The ceiling was decorated with plastic streamers and the walls with Sunday school lessons.

The church benches were filled with the families of the church… and the people filled with the hope in Christ that they are home. With the help of our Lord, and His abundant promises they will die here… this will be the home of the generations to come. God willing.

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him” Lamentations 3:22-24.