What I Learned Painting a Pole for 4 Hours
Jaco, Costa Rica November 2021
One afternoon we set out for what we thought would be a normal day of touching up light poles throughout out Jaco. Turns out, we were a little wrong.
5 minutes into painting, a couple of our friends from the local homeless community stopped by and asked to be a part of the painting taking place. One quickly sprawled a word in big blue letters across the pole, ruining the freshly painting scenery. Another took a brush and some green paint and proceeded to paint over all the black lines in an attempt to touch up the leaves. Oh, and at some point “Nicaragua” got painted across the pole as well. It felt like every time we would make progress we would go 2 steps forward and 3 steps back…At this point we definitely had our work cut out for us.
One of the guys who had been helping a lot over the past few days looked on in horror at the mess that was being made, shaking his head. He couldn’t understand why we’d let them “ruin” the post we were working on. We simply smiled and assured him it was okay. Even in his confusion, I pray he saw our hearts and understood the love of the Father being poured out in that moment.
My natural reaction was to stop all these people from all their “helping,” say thank you, and send them on their way. I mean, most of them were destroying the post and ruining our progress, adding hours worth of more work.
But I heard a still small voice telling me to wait and stay silent. Oh, what beautiful things come out of listening to the Lord and following his lead.
After a while our friends moved on and a man from the states stopped by to chat. He was in Jaco taking a Spanish-immersion class and had seen as painting the last couple days. Eventually we said goodbye and he moved on. An hour later he came back with a handful of new paintbrushes, saying that, “as an artist himself,” he couldn’t continue letting us paint with the gross, useless brushes we were using. I stood in awe of his generosity and kindness.
A couple minutes later a family stopped by and apparently the man was an artist because he immediately asked for 5 paint colors and began painting away at the post. I was honestly scared of what I’d find when I peeked around the side of the post, unsure if what I’d find. To my surprise I found a beautiful leaf and stem added to a mango we had painted, it blended in perfectly with the rest of the post.
We ended up working on that pole for 4 hours.
And you know what I realized? That was exactly where God wanted us all day. Our friends coming and “helping” wasn’t a mistake. Our ministry that day wasn’t to paint a pole. It was to love people really well and To invite the local community into it. To not turn anyone away.
I will always cherish this day and all the ways I saw the Lord moving.
