I have taken a few trips to Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico. Piedras Negras is where nachos were invented. For me, Piedras Negras is the home of Jose. Jose and his family had moved to the subdivision that I was working on, Piedra Angular. He offered to house a friend and me for a night.
When we arrived at Jose’s house, he greeted us, “Mi casa es su casa, porque su la construiste”: my house is your house because you built it. I tried to explain in the best Spanish I could that I had not built Jose’s house. To him, the specific house was not important. I had built a part of another house in the neighborhood, and so I had built his, for they were one family in the neighborhood.
I stayed at Jose’s house with a friend. My friend knew no Spanish, and I could understand un poquito, a little bit of Spanish. Good food knows no language barrier. Nor does spice, as Jose had me try some hot sauce and got a good laugh at my reaction.
Later in the evening, Jose wanted to talk about God. Now we had a huge language barrier. Jose got his Biblia and we got out our Bibles. Jose pointed to a book and I could translate to my friend as we turned to the same passage in English. Jose read aloud in Spanish a passage, and we read silently in English while we listened. Then my friend responded by turning to a passage, and I translated the book to Jose so he could find it. We had a conversation about God and with God using nothing but reading scripture to each other in our first languages.
I believe that hot evening on a flat Mexican desert, I was not in my house I had built or Jose’s house. I was in the mount of the Lord’s house.
Prayer:
Lord of all nations, show us how to turn our weapons of violence into tools for farming and construction. Remind us that we have been grafted on to your vine. May the vines we help you grow be places where folks who speak all languages find rest and where we can all learn of your ways from each other.
