Headlines and Landmines

You know you are working contextually when the morning paper’s urgent headlines are the same topics filling your day’s meetings. The leaders with whom we met are connecting not just with the media, but with immediate needs, with the most pressing cries of their people who are living and dying in the pressurized setting of “armed actors,” guerilla fighters and faltering military negotiations.

“There’s a war going on here,” we heard. Yet, many governmental officials brush over this complex, narcotics-driven conflict as incidental or as a thing of the past. Of course the past is never really past. It’s especially far from over for Luis who reported to us of his grandfather’s murder and how his family faces regular death threats because they dare to farm the land they’ve owned for decades. Where the rule of law is disrespected, lawlessness rules, and those who are “the least of these” suffer the greatest and never make the headlines.

The war is not over for Afro-Colombians and indigenous people. Working with our partners, LWR provides a voice for these who are the most voiceless. The war is not over for the families of the three people, on average, killed here everyday from landmines. I learned a new acronym: UXO, unexploded ordinance. Ask the thousands who have been maimed for life, if the war is over for them. Colombia leads the world in these grisly statistics. Rural people and children lead the way among those killed in this way. Thankfully, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Colombia (IELCO) also leads the way. They are the only church-body in this nation providing preventive education on landmines and HIV-AIDS advocacy.

In our meeting yesterday with Bishop Sigilfredo Buitrago, he movingly credited LWR with teaching him most of what he knows about advocacy. I resonated with his pastor’s heart and his Gospel-focus. From the Greek of Romans 1:16, we get the “dynamite” of the Gospel, our unabashed witness to the “powerless power” of the God who suffers alongside the suffering. And at the heart of the Gospel we discover the impulsion to explode into action, if you will, with a compassion that empowers the weak in the name of that Child who gives hope to children. “For all the boots of tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. For a child has been born for us” (Isaiah 9:5-6). We’ve all known and loved the last part of that quote, “For a child…”, verse 6, but when you add the warring context of the preceding verse five, your reflection is deepened, your faith gains context.

How will the headlines inform your prayers this upcoming Advent season? Ponder, in your heart, the most vulnerable, for example, children being killed by landmines, and their grieving mothers, and that Child, killed to redeem the world, and Mary, his mother.

So, as Tim McCully told me as we drove from point to point today—he’s photographically captured here perusing El Tiempo (www.eltiempo.com)–part of the humble genius of LWR is the way we work behind the scenes, often never making the headlines, but changing the headlines to give hope and peace.

On to points north…