mariachi band

When I mentioned earlier that we are trying to have all our get-togethers and meetings while we still can (referring to the current uncertainty due to COVID-19), I wasn’t thinking of this weekend. But it was a full one!

First, a man from our church passed away, and so our weekend began with a funeral on Friday. As far as we know, Roberto was a believer. We hadn’t seen him for a while (I think due to health issues), but he and his wife had been to our service the Sunday before he passed away. Roberto always had a smile for you.

On Saturday we joined a family from the church in Jesús María for their daughter’s 15th birthday party. A contrast indeed! It was an encouragement especially to hear the girl’s father speak and emphasize their family’s faith in the Lord.

On Sunday, we had our normal Sunday service, studying regeneration in Sunday school, and then Daniel 5 in the service – a message about “remembering” who God is and what He has done (something Belshazzar failed to do!).

Meanwhile, Mexico was making headlines with the women’s protests on Sunday, followed by the women’s strike on Monday. It has been very interesting to hear the news reports on the protests in particular.

The first news I read mentioned that many of the women were also marching for abortion rights, whereas other women were marching against the murder of girls in the womb. The next news I heard was that the pro-life women were actually a “counter-protest” – as if some were marching for women’s rights, but the pro-life group were against women’s rights! Funny how you can report the same thing different ways…

Of course most news outlets have simply stayed away from the abortion angle.

The weekend has reminded me that we need to continually pray for people as they navigate traditions. Funerals are full of traditions in any culture – but where do those traditions come from? Are they good, bad, or neutral? In many cases, funeral traditions are actually a denial of the gospel.

15th birthday parties are full of traditions – and here we have the same questions. In Mexico, this tradition does not originate from a Christian point of view, though it has been adopted by many Christians. So where do you keep traditions, where do you change them?

And of course on the weekend everyone was talking about rights, and protests, and vandalism, and abortion, and violence. So many things mixed together – so hard to navigate the course and seek God’s will and purpose when there’s money and politics and evil and good all mixed in together.

So keep praying! We keep going back to prayer and the promises and truths in God’s Word to be our anchor. Because, as we say in Mexico, all this is very complicado – a loaded word that means much more than complicated. It means difficult, confusing, challenging. People need the Lord!

As I mentioned to one of Roberto’s family members the other night, when Jesus enters a family, He can bring healing and unification. But He can also bring conflict (Matthew 10:35-36). Because the truth has a way of doing that – especially when it’s rejected.

For more details on some of the events of the weekend, check out Rod’s post here – A Funeral and a Party