The bridge

The man and his bike were splayed across the narrow footbridge. The chain had come off its sprocket but the simple task of putting it back was frustrated by intoxication and a rage that burned from his eyes. It was quickly clear that the approaching parade of our Canadian mission’s team was doing nothing to improve his mood.

There was no going around him. I stepped gingerly across his bike, trying to negotiate the fine balance between too little or too much, too dominant or too passive, eye contact, uncomfortably aware of the well-worn machete lying beside him.

We were in Belize on a 10-day project with the impossible assignment of converting a derelict shed into a classroom for 60 children. To a former builder, there could hardly have been a more frustrating project and the rational side of me wondered what sort of math could justify spending tens of thousands of dollars to send menial workers or even skilled carpenters into a country where men wile away weeks waiting to be paid $20 a day. Welcome to missions in Belize!

Belize was an exotic adventure for this wide-eyed bunch of western Canadians. The stifling heat of the rain forest, the hodgepodge of languages and races in Belize City, the battered buses and vans that ferried us through ramshackle villages, the houses built with scraps of tin, brick and miscellaneous lumber, the roadside restaurants which consisted of a lean-to roof and a battered barbeque with assorted combinations of chicken, rice and beans on the menu, price negotiable – all the wonder of this strange world overwhelmed us. Was this really the same world we lived in? What could we possibly do here?

It was the children at the orphanage who took away any doubt about the value of our trip. The younger team members in particular bonded with the children. As they did so, we saw the image of God in humanity. We were reminded that this image of God has no geographic, cultural or racial boundaries. This knowledge overwhelmed everyone on the team. Although they were orphans, the children were able to play, laugh and sing just as children do at home. Basic shelter, clothing, nourishment and safety released their spirits to enjoy life and pleasures of the moment the way only children can.

The children became the bridge between our cultures. When we looked into their eyes and saw them playing, we knew we were one and that it is our obligation to reach out. We were doing a good thing.

Mission trips represent the core values of our Christianity. We are commanded to heal the sick and bind up the broken-hearted. Our project may not have been the best way to build a classroom but we had connected with God’s work in a priceless way and we knew it was right.

And then we came face to face with the angry man on the bridge. Just as the laughing eyes of the children connected their exotic land sympathetically to our own, his angry eyes reminded us that this world, like our own, also has its deeply broken places. And now the darkness lay across our bridge.

As I reflected, my first inclination was to redouble my commitment to the children, to invest in humanity before the depravity of the world order takes over so visibly. With children you can extend a hand and that hand will usually be received with innocence and trust. There was no way to reach across barriers of intoxication and rage. Life had scarred that soul and what once had been the image of God was buried under mountains of pain and self-gratification, deception and self-deception. The best we could do was step across him without unleashing the volcano. Our assignment was on the other side.

And then something stunningly obvious occurred to me. Some 40 years earlier this man had been one of those smiling children. There was no reason to doubt that he too had once laughed and danced and smiled disarmingly at a gesture of kindness from a stranger. And it occurred to me that a God who sees human life from its beginning to its end as a vapour does not draw an artificial line within it. God sees the laughing child on the playground and the angry man on the bridge as one and the same being.

Neither angry men nor children have looked the same to me since.

James Toews is pastor of Neighbourhood Church, Nanaimo, B.C. He and a group organized by the Nanaimo Christian School recently spent two weeks in Belize.