Abundance
In a former church of mine, there was a family that felt called to move to rural Guatemala, employ local contractors, and host mission trip groups from the States to build sturdy homes for impoverished families. The time that I spent serving with them taught me a lot about gratitude.
I have to admit that international mission trips make me uneasy. It is clearly true that us folks in the “developed” world have a lot of wealth and resources that our siblings in “underdeveloped” countries could greatly benefit from, and that it’s a faithful expression of our faith to travel to these locations and build homes, schools, and hospitals. However, these trips always run the risk of being a kind of “poverty tourism,” where wealthy suburbanites send their children abroad in the hopes of giving them perspective and making them grateful for the conveniences of life in the good old US of A. This is not the kind of gratitude I am talking about.
I remember one summer we took a group of 20 youth to work with our family in Guatemala, where we spent a week building an insulated home for a family. Now, poorer families in this area lived in small compound-like structures with an outer wall, a few shelters made of lashed corn husks, and an inner courtyard where livestock grazed. A few of the youth spent most of the week playing with the family’s chickens in between brief periods of watching others swing hammers. At the end of the week, once the project was completed, the family invited us all for a meal. Rice, fruit, and a stew of vegetables and chicken. It was a lovely meal, and as we left, one of the youth noticed that there were only two chickens running about the courtyard when there had been five earlier in the week.
They gave a significant portion of their wealth to show their gratitude by feeding us. They gave generously out of their poverty to express gratitude. I think this opened the mission team's eyes to a truth about gratitude that went far beyond the usual “I’m glad that my life is more comfortable than theirs.” It helped everyone see that gratitude is an act of faith. It is an act of defiant empowerment. It is an act of resilience. Gratitude is generosity in the face of scarcity, kindness in the face of anger, connection in the face of division, and hope in the face of fear.
When the world seems to be falling apart and nothing will ever be ok again, gratitude is the most subversive act available to us. Gratitude has the power to transform what is broken, enable us to see an alternative future, and create hope.
Rev. Ryan Young
