Buenas Noches Mexico

So broken, so torn, so angry and confused.

These men are human, just like me and you, full of anguish from their pasts and hardened by fear and bitterness. Yet drawn together in unity. Searching for love and acceptance. For family. These men, even boys, are searching for love and they’ve found it in the gangs. And if that’s the only place they’ve found it, I cry harder. Where is the body of Christ that embodies love, that exemplifies acceptance, that showers a grace that leads to repentance. Where are their families? Their teachers? Their friends? Who inspires them to make the world a better place? Oh how different it would be if those were present, but the reality is that our world is broken, and much of what should be is absent. Jesus, my heart cries out. It breaks. It longs to give them a way out. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. The dozens of people killed, the gallons of innocent blood spilled. All in the name of the gang. The violence is overwhelming and I pray for their families, of both the victim and the killer. I pray for both the destroyed and the destroyer. For what’s truly at work is the Destroyer. Driving them to this madness. But do they know anything else? Do they even have the possibility to make it out alive? I don’t pretend to know, to understand, what drives people to gangs, how they work, or the frame of mind they operate in, but I do know this. It’s darkness. And under that blanket of darkness lies A deep and desperate child, defenceless and damned by everyone around.

Where is the ground? The firm foundation? The light that brings restoration? God I know you can. I know you are so powerful that you can even change the darkest heart of stone. Your grace has the power to flow and wash away the black dirt to reveal the frightened flesh beneath. You have the power to heal. To bring even the fiercest leader of a gang to his knees. And I pray for that. For your glory to be shown in that. That the worst of sinners drowns in your grace and love and acceptance and the radical change is inexplicable. Being lifted out of the hell he lives in and into your marvellous light. In Jesus name, I know it’s possible, so I pray that it becomes a reality.