Forgiving his uncle, friend shows God's grace

SOLOLÁ — My friend Yazo has a simple faith in God that perplexes and amazes me, showing God’s power to forgive others.

Sometimes I wonder whether Yazo knows God hears his prayers just as well as his pastor’s prayers, but on other days he blows me away with his simple obedience to Jesus’ teaching.

Several years ago, Yazo decided to try to make some extra money. With the savings he had, he bought 300 baby chickens, planning to raise them for market. But he made a big mistake, he told me: He forgot to ask the pastor to come pray for the chicks. Within days, they all died, except for two.

It’s quite possible God wanted to teach Yazo something, but I told him God would have heard his prayers just as well as those of his pastor.

A couple of years ago, Yazo lost his good-paying job. One day, a neighbor offered him work chopping firewood. Yazo chopped about a cord of firewood by noon. A day or two later, a mason asked what he was doing the next week: “Nothing.”

“Good,” the man said. “You’ll be my assistant on Monday.” “Sounds great,” Yazo answered.

On Sunday, however, the mason stopped by to say he couldn’t hire Yazo. Why not? “Your uncle told me not to hire you.” Ouch. When Yazo told his wife, she became angry with the uncle, but Yazo told her, “Don’t get upset. God forgave us, so we have to forgive my uncle. Let’s just trust God to provide me with some work.” (See Matthew 6:14,15)

Not long after that, Yazo saw his aunt standing in the street near his home one evening. Instead of maintaining his distance from a meddlesome relative, he walked over to greet her. She was waiting for a taxi, but a boy she had sent to fetch one had been gone for quite some time. Yazo ran up the hill and discovered the boy had gotten sidetracked. So he called a friend who owns a taxi, and the friend — just two blocks away — arrived quickly.

One day, his uncle and aunt’s daughter needed to borrow Yazo’s wife’s typewriter for her schoolwork. At first, Yazo’s wife didn’t want to give it. “No,” Yazo told her. “We have to forgive them and let them borrow it.” Many more times, the girl needed to borrow the typewriter and each time, Yazo happily sent it out the door.

Finally, the girl graduated from her class, and her parents — who formerly had held a grudge for some unknown reason against Yazo — sent Yazo’s family a special meal — the traditional Kaqchikel soup, “pulique.”

Would they have sent pulique, would they be on friendly terms if Yazo hadn’t forgiven his uncle and aunt and shown his forgiveness in concrete terms? I wonder.