New Creations

This morning started out slow at the hospital coffee shop, so I stood in the back of the waiting room for awhile and listened to Nestor Hugo preaching to the patients. He had a CD of worship music, and he'd play a song and sing along and then talk to the people about the message. He had one song on repeat for awhile, one about how in Christ we are new creations, that we are no longer what we were. God is the one who heals, Nestor Hugo explained; he alone can make us new. I listened for awhile while he preached in Spanish; when he switched to Quechua I came back to the cafe and waited for customers.

The rest of the morning I stayed busy at the cafe, before returning to the guest house for lunch with the volunteers. Two of them are working on preparing a lesson for the girls at an orphanage that we visit frequently. Most of these girls have experienced abuse, which makes the lesson the volunteers are preparing -- about God's plan for sex -- particularly sensitive.

The volunteers are focusing on education, making sure the girls understand the way sex affects people, physically and emotionally. It's something God created, they will explain, but many have abused this gift.

They especially want the girls to know that they are not responsible for what has been done to them, but that they have a choice, from now on, about what they do with their bodies.

These girls, who have no choice about their past, have a choice about their future. They have been treated as if they were cheap, but they are so precious that our God died to make them new.

2 Corinthians tells us that "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come." I often forget that this verse is followed by this next sentence: "Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:17-19).

The message Nestor Hugo was expressing this morning, is the same as the message we're trying to bring. It is the message that has been entrusted to us -- the message of reconciliation, of hope, of the opportunity to be made new.