sept 24th

Sept 23 09 2
Isaiah 40:12,26 “Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?...Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: who created all these?”
At the end of my street there is a little place that I love to go and read. Its overlooks that most picturesque landscape of the Andes. I feel as though im living in a post card. A “breathtaking view” has taken on a completely new meaning for me. I am confronted with these powerful images of Gods glory everywhere I look. To know that the God that I regularly sit and talk intimately with, that I can be so very close to, has “weighed these mountains on scales” and created them is not only humbling but terrifying. I can not help but see how far I fall short of his glory each day. Even on my best of days when I love deeply and serve and do not commit any big “sins” I still fail to praise my God the way he deserves. He deserves infinite praise and because I fail to offer him even a fracture of what he deserves what I deserve is infinite death. I am confronted each day with Gods mercy to me in Jesus. I have been more deeply convinced of my sin, my smallness and my desperate need for Christ. He is all I have to stand on. When I one day stand in front of a such a holy God my only hope is that I am hidden in Christ. I am hidden in him and made perfect through his sacrifice and it is my only only only hope of salvation. I am daily completely dependent and desperate for Him. When I sit and look at this beautiful creation and “lift my eyes and look” from the pages of scripture I am reading I can not help but be convinced of Gods goodness to me. I am thankful for Christ, not only because of my salvation but because through him I can draw near to the one who created all of this and I can sit and talk with him, know and be known by him and just be so satisfied by being close to him. His presence and closeness in my life is the best gift I have ever known.
Today I went up to the mountains. We stopped at a school in a small community to meet the staff there. They shared that many of the 140 students at their school walk 2 hours in the morning to school and 2 hours back after school (maybe more because its uphill on the way home and these are not small hills here). They get there not having eaten anything and many don’t eat until 4 in the afternoon. The government used to pay for breakfast for the students (21 cents a student = 600 a month) but they stopped this past year due to the economic crisis so these kids are struggling to learn each day because they are so hungry. The school was asking for help to buy the students breakfast but Mountains of Hope doesn’t have that kind of money to help them. The kids get home and work in the fields until its dark. I just realized how much I have taken my education for granted. They go through so much to get to school. If its raining they show up cold and wet.
After the school we stopped at this little orphans house. Her mother died in child birth and her father died in some accident. She now lives with her grandmother who looks like she is about 90. They have so little but shared their dinner for the night with us. It was so touching. I loved seeing how they live. They are so poor and without the help of paul and sue this little girl would never be able to go to school and get an education. On Sunday we are taking rosie (the little girl) into the city to buy her some new school clothes and some things the grandmother needs.