¨Poco a Poco¨

I learned a very important phrase my first week in Guatemala: "poco a poco" or "little by little." It seems that's how I'm doing everything here, adjusting to the differences in food and climate, getting the lay of the city, learning the language, working up the courage to try to use what I'm learning with my host family and people I meet around Xela... It has required much more patience than I expected to only creep forward in my goals each day. I had grand visions of what I'd be able to say and understand after my time at the language school, but after almost 100 hours of instruction I still only catch segments of the conversation when people speak to me. I still keep my Spanish- English dictionary close by to look up the seemingly endless supply of words I don't know and search my notebook trying to remember when to use which tense and which verbs are irregular. Some days I'm amazed and encouraged by how well I'm doing-- who knew I'd be able to hold a coherent conversation with my host father about race relations in the US?-- but others I can't seem to formulate a decent Spanish sentence to save my life. 

 

However, I've been mercifully reminded lately that this slow, sometimes faltering pace is how Christ transforms us too. Both as individual Christians and as the communal church we are all being made into a new creations "poco a poco". Just as in Spanish, in prayer, ministry, and studying Scripture, sometimes the words simply will not come, neither from me or to me. One day I wake up thirsting for Scripture and enjoy a refreshing and fulfilling time of prayer or a meaningful conversation articulating or recieving some truth about God, and another the weight of my failures keeps me awake late into the night trying to figure out how to begin a prayer that I'm never able to form. It isn't always (or even often) a consistent forward motion towards spiritual growth, but I AM being shaped into the woman God has created and called me to be, "poco a poco."  I am far from her today, just as the church is far from the bride she is intended to be, but we are in the process, inching our way "poco a poco" towards a God who is always faithfully reaching out to us to guide us to Godself, a God who knows our frame and remembers that we are but dust (Psalm 103:14), a God with incredibly realistic expectations about both our successes and our failures. And there is great hope in that. 

"Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and souls and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it." 1 Thessalonians 5:12