Cinco de Mayo: One of My Favorite Holidays

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’.” (John 1:23)

“Cinco de Mayo” in Spanish means May 5th. It’s becoming a major holiday in our country due to a growing Mexican-American population. For them, it’s a celebration of their culture, but a lot of Americans have also embraced the holiday -mostly it gives them another day in the year to celebrate. After all, our calendar is filling up with reasons to have a party.

Cinco de Mayo is an important day for me, too. However, my reason to celebrate has nothing to do with the reason for the holiday. It just happens to be the day that I decided to give my heart and life to Christ – a new birthday of sorts for me. On May 5th this year, I will be 22 years-old. It’s another way of looking at how old I really am. I’m certainly not the same man before my personal Cinco de Mayo!

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Robbie’s role in my salvation. There’s another story about my journey towards salvation that is quite remarkable because it demonstrates just how far God will go, not just for me but for any of us. Remember, in God’s eyes, we’re all the same. He is “no respecter or of persons.” (Acts 10:34)

In my case, God told two 17 year-old kids at a church youth meeting to ride down a long country road one night and simply keep repeating through an amplifier and microphone they placed in the back of their pickup truck a verse of Scripture we’ve all heard: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! (Matthew 3:2)

I’m surprised, and grateful, that their pastor let them do it. He truly believed that God spoke to them, and told them to go for it.

I was on the deck of my wife’s brother’s house when I heard them, lamenting about how all my problems seemed to be crashing down on me. Suicide seemed to make a lot of sense at the time. Indeed, I felt I was worth much more dead than I was alive.

When I heard the voice, I thought it was a voice out in the wilderness. So did my wife. We heard no truck and it wasn’t coming from the road in front of my brother in-law’s home. It was coming from the woods behind his house. I think it would be okay to say in this context that that voice scared the hell out of me!

I’m not sure that I knew what “repent” meant at the time. I remember thinking what strange word that was. To the non-Christian, repent IS a very unusual word. It took days for me to weigh what I heard.

But God wasn’t through with what he wanted me to hear. The night I heard that voice, my wife told me I was “demon-oppressed”. I’d never heard those words either and remember thinking that maybe she was crazier than me. That was until the next day when we rode by a huge Baptist church in another town and saw the words on their marque: “God will deliver those who are demon-oppressed.”

I knew then that God was speaking to me. A few days later, May 5th, 1991, I surrendered and asked the Lord to forgive me, change me, and help me live for him. He has certainly delivered, and it’s why I refer to may 5th as my birthday. I am indeed born-again.

What I’ve realized over the years is that God’s love for all of is just as deep and profound as the love he showed for me. A favorite songwriter of mine refers to it as boundless love. He loves each and every one of us the very same way.

We all wonder at times if God hears our prayers. Why he doesn’t seem to be showing up when we need him the most is an often asked question of ours. Perhaps he wants us to learn something, to get out of our own way and allow our faith and trust in his goodness and mercy to grow. I really don’t know why he may be silent in your life, or mine, at times.

What I do know is the same God that spoke to me through those 17 year-old boys loves you as much as he loves me. His Holy Word proclaims in Hebrews 13:5: “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Trust that promise, and you can have a Cinco de Mayo of sorts to celebrate, too.