To drive beside it and see its whole, you must tilt your eyes north and south. It is majestic and vast; a mass that can be seen among the landscape of Riobamba, Ecuador. It's early Monday morning, and people are coming and going through its doors. There are hugs and cheek kisses, and vendors lining the steps as people exit, just hoping for at least one sale. It all looks productive, as if hope could be produced here. But then I enter a hardware shop and meet Pedro and his wife, Laura. He attends that church. He enters those doors and sits among the faithful each week. It sounds good up front, but then I learn that Pedro doesn't believe that Jesus is God. Pedro doesn't believe in the Trinity. Pedro sees his sufficiency coming from American visitors, not the God I know personally. You see, Pedro lives among the darkness of the every day, where there is no Light. Pedro goes to seek the light, yet he leaves without so much as a shadow that rests behind it. The book I read each day says, "The message I have is this...that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all". God wants to call the Pedro's of Ecuador, and the people I meet in those same dark places here in the United States, out of the darkness and into His marvelous light. Otherwise, the darkness will swallow him and all those just like him. Otherwise, the Pedro's will remain hopeless. Otherwise, Pedro will die in his sins.
"Oh Lord, send out Your light, and Your truth, let it lead him; let it bring him to Your glorious throne" (Psalm 43:3)
