I am on American airlines flight 926 from El Salvador to Miami in seat 9C. Maura (seated in seat 9A) is a radiant, bubbly, Christian looking, El Salvadoran woman who appears to be approximately 65-75 years of age.
The flight attendant hands her the US Customs form and through hand motions, and a language I don’t understand, Maura informs me at she needs a pen or pencil. I hand her my pen but she shakes her head and rejects the pen. Then it hits me. She doesn’t know how to write.
Clearly she is a very bright woman. Her hands speak volumes about years of working in gardens and fields and raising a family and getting the job done when hard work was the only thing to get it accomplished.
My guess is that she simply never had the opportunity to learn to read and write.
Had the opportunity risen, I think she would have been on it like Trump on a dollar or the Yankees on a quality free agent.
She has me thinking, not about her lack of opportunity when she was a school aged child, but about my lack of responsibility in the face of gargantuan opportunity.
Maybe Paul had a similar experience. I guess no one would know for sure. Something was rolling around in his bright mind when he wrote to the folks in Ephesus, “Make the most of every opportunity.”
I asked the flight attendant, who speaks Spanish, if she would help Maura complete the form. When the flighty attendant returned with the form completed, she asked Maura to place her signature on the bottom line.
I watched Maura carefully as she wrote her initials, M. D.
How are you doing with the responsibility of the opportunities God has given to you?