Only a Dream in Rio

James Taylor has a song with the line, “Only a dream in Rio…” that keeps coming to mind.

We’ve been in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the past week for a World Vision International board meeting.  Above this city of both the luxurious Copacabana and the favelas (slums) looms the statue of Christ the Redeemer.  We traveled up through the rain forest to see it up close the first day we were here. 

When the statue was originally designed Jesus was to have the world in one hand and the cross in the other, but they changed it realizing that the profile of Jesus himself was the cross and the city of Rio below is a picture of the world He loves and embraces. 

This week has given us many up close pictures of the myriad of those drawn into His all-encompassing love.

• The Australian ceo who has everything but a relationship with the woman he loves
• The pastor from Mali who was raised by Muslims in a home with violence, but still found Jesus
• The Bolivian surgeon who works with 800 children ravaged by sexual abuse.

And then there are the two girls in the foreground of this picture - Erica and Natalia, who are just a little younger than our daughters.  They both grew up in poverty as World Vision sponsored children and now tell stories to the young children who come to the WV community center and paint characters from the stories on the children’s faces. Because they’ve had people who have cared about them and invested in them, they are investing in the next generation.

But that’s not all.  Erica wants to be a lawyer and Natalia wants to be a doctor.  So Natalia is learning to do health screenings for sponsored children and together these two young women have mobilized a group of others to lobby the government for better health care.

I LOVE it that there is nowhere you can go in this city where you don’t see the statue of Christ the Redeemer, arms open wide in invitation, an invitation for all these people and more who are, I believe, part of His dream of love for Rio and the world.