Today we woke up and went and got food at La Colonia to make sandwiches to take to the dump. We also picked up two huge branches of bananas to take to them. I was really excited about delivering all the food and water to the dump, but I never expected it to be such a different experience from last time. When we got to the dump, it started to pour down rain. When we finally parked the truck, I was soaked within 30 seconds. All of the people at the dump were huddled together under makeshift shelters they had put together out of tarps. We passed around food and sandwiches and bananas to everyone that we could, but eventually, of course, we ran out of food. That's when things started to get a little ugly. There was one drunk man there, who had probably been sniffing glue every day of his life, who was not happy at all with me and Steve when we told him we didn't have anymore food. When that didn't look good, we loaded up in the truck to leave as quick as we could. But the drunk guy wouldn't let go of the truck, and he was so physically weak that he couldn't stand on his own, so that when Nolan started to back up, he almost accidentally backed over the man. We yelled to stop, and some other people picked the guy up off the ground. I was the only guy in the back of the truck, and so he started coming at me trying to start a fight. But it wasn't a scary thing; it was heart-breaking to watch. This guy couldn't hardly stand up; he was skinnier than a rail; I wasn't threatened by him, I was just crushed to see this man who was so despaired and overwhelmed with sorrow that he was trying to pick a fight with anyone or anything that he could, even if it was the missionary who was trying to give his friends some food. Rob Bell said it best once, "Sometimes people are always trying to pick a fight because they've realized they're not actually in one." This man had such a hole in his life that he was angry; angry, and frustrated, and mad, and confused, and hurting, and he was lashing out at me just because he was realizing his hurt. And the sad part is, every human being on the face of the planet has that same hole within us, we're just not all as aware of it as that guy was.
And it's a God-shaped hole, because He's the only one that will ever be able to fill it.
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