| Dios No
Falla...God Never Fails. Dear friends, Dios no falla…God never fails. Perhaps 2000 years ago, when God’s long-promised Messiah came into the world as a homeless, helpless baby rather than a warrior-king dressed in battle gear, His people doubted this simple truth. Maybe when we, as God’s people today, hear stories of young children puffing away their lives on a bottle of yellow glue in the streets of Honduras, we may be subject to the same misgivings. Yet just as God chose to use that anonymous baby to bring salvation to a dark and dying world, today He continues to use the desperate and the weak to bring forth evidence of His redemption to those who have not yet heard it.
Dios no falla…God never fails. This is the theme of a new album that five of our young men produced this year called “In the process”. The artwork of the album shows these very words scrawled on a broken down wall. The picture represents perfectly the songs our young men have chosen to sing: songs that speak of God’s hope written on lives that have endured unspeakable tragedy and brokenness. Marvin sang it this way in one of his songs: “In the midst of a sinful world, You chose to transform me through Your amazing might. I know longer feel tired; I have left my past behind, and even when I go through bad times, You will always be at me side. I never thought I would come this far; I never thought I would see with my two eyes; the kind of place that I see in dreams only comes true when You’re here with me.”
Dios no falla…God never fails, even when we repeatedly fail Him. Lately, we have had some experience with the ups and downs of individual redemption stories. Evidence of this is Wilmer: a child who grew up on the streets before entering the Micah House in July. A diminutive thirteen year old who had never held a pencil before coming to Micah, Wilmer’s childhood consisted of trying to beg, borrow or steal the ten lempiras (fifty US cents) needed to purchase his daily bottle of yellow glue. Wilmer’s first weeks in the project were a constant battle as his body craved the constant hit on the glue bottle. You could almost set your watch by his need: in the mornings he was a sweet child who hugged anyone that came through our doors, and in the afternoons he turned into an angry, belligerent street person whose body screamed against the lack of its precious drug. Finally, one Saturday, while on a project field trip to a swimming pool, he could take abstinence no longer and he fled back to the streets. For six long weeks, he slipped back into the sub-human world of street “life”…if you could really describe it as living. But…
Dios no falla…God never fails. Through His prophet Isaiah he said, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand…” One day in September, our newly-arrived street ministry coordinator Dan Paul brought Wilmer back to the Micah House. He picked up right where he left off, except this time he seems to have left his desire for drugs and his violent mood swings behind on the streets. His character seems to be changing day-by-day, and he is beginning to taste some of the innocent joy that belongs to childhood. Will Wilmer stay on this current, happy course? It is comforting to know that, while Wilmer’s future is hidden from our eyes, his heavenly Father has already purposed his end from the beginning
Dios no falla…God never fails. After eight years of existence, we now have more than the ups and downs of a detoxing Wilmer as evidence of God’s faithfulness; blessedly, we now also have the evidence of tangible victories to sustain us through the long, often obscured process of transformation. José is one such living example. He has this to say about his childhood: “When I was seven years old, my father began drinking. He became abusive and hit my mother and us kids. School gradually became replaced with begging, shining shoes and being in the streets. Eventually, my mother left the family. My sister and I went to the streets every day to beg. We had to give our money to our father or he would hit us.” Fast forward through five years at the Micah Project and we have a miraculously different headline: “ABUSED BEGGAR BOY BECOMES FIRST IN FAMILY TO GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL.” On November 10, José joined four of his classmates to receive his diploma and to make a total of fourteen to graduate from high school through the history our home-schooling program. One of our young men, Darwin Pavón, gifted us with even more evidence of God’s hand in this work: despite losing his home in hurricane Mitch and his father a year later in a traffic accident, he overcame overwhelming odds to graduate from Zamorano University on December 1 as an agricultural engineer.
Dios no falla…God never fails. Academic advancement is one small aspect of this truth but, more importantly, we also have the evidence of changed hearts. José brings his testimony to a climax in this way: “I want to be with God always and never be separated from Him. God is good and He guides and protects us every day. He is with us through the good and the bad. He is my best friend.” It is our prayer that one day little Wilmer, upon reflecting on his high school graduation, will be able to express his faith with these same simple and completely trusting words. That future day is a long, hard climb from where we are now (Wilmer still doesn’t know the vowels, for example) but, when I begin to doubt its possibility, the refrain of Marvin’s song keeps coming back to me: “I never though I would come this far…”
Dios no falla…God never fails. When each one of our high school graduates walked up to receive their diploma in November, I slipped a smooth river stone into their hands. On each stone was engraved one word: HOPE. It is hope that makes us understand, even through difficult and confusing times, through rebellion and sin, through weeks and sometimes months of two steps forward and five steps backward, that God, truly, never fails.
Thank you for being the living embodiment of that hope as you love and support our young men.
Dios no falla. Su hermano en Cristo,
Michael Miller
Click here to hear Marvin's song "My Two Eyes".
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