Gloria

On Wednesday we went to a home in the mountains that I had only been to once or twice before. When we pulled up in front of their home, we had to maneuver around barricades that had been placed in the road. In the middle of the barricade there were piles of flowers and two white candles. Two lives. Forever changed. There were crowds of people. All speaking in a tongue in which I only understand a few phrases. Nahualt. The language of the native people. Everyone held flowers. Women where wailing. Dozens of candles were burning in the dimly lit room. Grown men stood silently with tears flowing down their faces. The air was stiff and there was the heavy scent of incense. The children clung to their mother's as though their lives depended on it....and the mothers held on even tighter. In the middle of it all there was a white box. Smaller than four feet long and only a couple feet wide. A casket. A casket holding what used to be the body of a perfectly healthy newly turned four-year-old girl. Gloria.
Two days before she had been playing outside her house with her six-year-old sister Andrea when a truck lost control and hitting them both. And in an instance that little life was no more.
In the house we sang songs of worship to our God. The wailing fell to soft snobs. One of my Christian brothers began to share in Spanish from the Bible about what Jesus thought of children. Another brother translated in Nahualt. The men told the women to stop there chatter and listen to the Word of God. They listened intently. I began to see peace on the faces of the children. This was a message that they had heard many times before. But because of timidness or something else, their parents had never stopped to listen. This was a new message for them...a message of hope.
A little while later we crowded into trucks to make the drive up a mountain. We were above the clouds and there were colorful crosses dotting the rolling hills. The wailing was back in full force. Children wept openly for their sister. They threw flowers into a whole in the ground on top of her tiny casket. We sang. My brother shared again. This time about Kind David and he had in the Lord when he lost a child. The phrase that was repeated often was, "Gloria esta en gloria con Dios!" Meaning, "Gloria (the girl's name) is in glory with God. And then we sang again. We sang through the tears. We sang as they mourned. We sang as the embraced each other. We sang as they closed up the grave and covered it with cement. We finished off by singing what had been some of Gloria's favorite childrens' songs.
Yesterday we went back to the family's home. The two candles where still burning in the middle of the road, but this time I occasionally heard laughter in that home. In this area, there is only one adult who claims Jesus Christ as his Savior. The people are very grounded in their traditional beliefs. Only the children have been interested in learning about the true God. But last night, the people just kept coming. One brother shared from the Word of God, we prayed, and we SANG. For a long time. Again we ended with songs that had been loved by Gloria. We sang on song, complete with motions and everything, that I had never fully understood before. But last night I understood all of it. And I wept. It goes something like this: "I will worship God with my heart and with my voice. And if I lose my voice, then I will worship Him with my hands. And if I lose my hands, I will worship Him with my feet. And if I lose my feet, I will worship Him with my soul. And if I lose my soul, it is because I have gone to be with Him." Yes. That was one of Gloria's favorite songs. And the story of her so very dear short life.