My time in Budapest was gilded with tours of this beautiful city. Strikingly posed on both banks of the winding Danube, Budapest offers stunning views from every aspect, like a diamond with a thousand glinting facets. I joked with my uncle about how many pictures he was taking, snapping away with his camera like Ansel Adams with ADHD, but in truth, every time my feet stopped, whatever I happened to be looking at was postcard worthy. Ancient ornate architecture boldly fronts the river's edge. Soft round hills knuckle perfectly along the serpentine banks. And the river itself, not wide, not swift, but old, older even than the oldest stories of quest and rest on the Danube, pulls the eyes like a magnet.
Other struggling peoples I have visited in India, Mexico and Jamaica, have captured my heart in a way that would have me standing to my feet alone in a crowd to cheer them on as they work toward a better tomorrow. But the Hungarians, I would strive alongside them, head down, shoulders straining to the task, to see one step of progress achieved, to pause, flash a sardonic smirk at the world, as though to say, "put that in your pipe and smoke it", then strain again to gain one more step.
That God is alive and well in Budapest in evidenced by the hundreds of young people hungry for hope who flood to places where Hope Incarnate is proclaimed. Yet, thousands, maybe millions more, can't look up from their own pain long enough to indulge the folly that hope may be found in Hungary.
So I pray for Hungary, and for my friends Rusty and Beth, and many more like them who have bent their backs to the hard Hungarian life for the opportunity to show the way to Hope.
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