“Beauty Will Rise”

This morning I woke up to an extremely heartbreaking text message… Favela Moinho, a favella that I have spent many days inside playing with beautiful children who by God’s mercy alone can still find happiness inside of themselves to laugh and to play despite their brokenness and despair, burnt down. This morning thousands of people who barely had anything to call their own lost everything: clothes, food, homes, and lives. The only part of this story that gives me any hope is the the fact that A.M.O (the ministry in Brazil that partners with my church) has been pouring themselves into this ministry for several years. This favela is the only one that ever made me uncomfortable, in fact one many occasions it was said to be “hell without the flames”, this favela, more than others, was FULL of drugs, poverty, adultery, prostitution, despair, sickness, etc. Every time I caught myself questioning my presence there I remembered that these people were in desperate need of the Father and if I was not willing to provide this then I had to assume that no one else was either. This past summer when I was serving in Brazil I noticed that we were focusing much more heavily on favela Moinho then any other year I had been and today God revealed the reason why. Beauty will rise from this destruction. Though many were lost, some were saved. A.M.O has done any amazing job of growing in fellowship with the inhabitants of Moinho this is going to be a great blessing in the days to come, they will be able to provide aid and hope to the survivors in a personal and religious way. I do not know nor understand the will of God but I do know that he has a hand in everything that occurs and that he is beyond capable of rising up beauty from these ashes. Please, please, please, be in prayer over these beautiful people they need YOU desperately. I cannot stop thinking of this sweet little boy who begged me over and over again to spin him in circles, for hours we spun and laughed and threw frisbee, it destroys me to know that that precious little boy lost everything if not his life this morning as I was waking up in the safety of my apartment. We are so richly blessed and I so often take that for granted. Please join me in prayer over  Favela Moinho !

“Beauty Will Rise”- Steven Curtis Chapman