Easter Seems so Far Away

There are so many thoughts and threads going through my mind today.  As usual I’d like to try to tie them up all in a neat little package but the world is far more complex than this.

I’m remembering a year ago when I was in Haiti.  An experience that I still don’t really have the words to describe or capture.  A year later I still struggle with the scenes of desperation and despair I witnessed.  And I have no hope of working out the tension between the glimpses of hope and the unmistakable hold death still has.  I constantly remember the smiles of the children receiving lunch at school as well as the pleas of the children waiting outside the school to see if there would be any leftovers for them.

On today’s date in 1980, the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, was martyred for speaking out against the violence, poverty, and social injustice in El Salvador.  The legacy and stories of this man have shaped me and so many others.  As I remember his death, I also remember Romero’s remarkable faith and courage that were formed and displayed so vividly in his work of showing God’s love in word and action.

And today is also my favorite day of the church year: Maundy Thursday.  It is the day in which we remember the last supper Jesus had with his disciples in which he began the sacrament of communion.  It’s a day marked by a celebration of community, grace, and the connection we will forever have with Jesus and our fellow members of the Church.  After supper Jesus gave his followers a new commandment: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34).  I love the messages Jesus shared with his disciples and with us even as he knew his death on the cross was coming the next day.

With all this remembering I’m finding it difficult to move forward today.  It’s so frustrating to recognize that in the grand scheme of things, not much has changed since these events 1 year ago, 36 years ago, and nearly 2000 years ago.  The world is still heavy with pain, suffering, evil, and death.  In Haiti, instability and extreme poverty remain.  While there are certainly pockets of hope these oases are fragile and could be destroyed so easily.  In El Salvador the gang violence has reached an all time high, and so many of my friends and acquaintances there are forced to live in constant fear.  In our world, we continue to see more and more examples of people being divided rather unified.  We see this in our politics, on social media, in our culture, and most devastatingly in the Church.  There are an infinite amount of examples of how we fail to love our neighbors as Jesus loved us.

Even though Easter is only three days away, today it seems unbearably far away.

Unambiguous

In Haiti, the newness and extremes of everything we were seeing, learning, and doing made it difficult to keep everything straight in my mind.  So much ran together in my brain.  Who said what.  Where we went.  What day it was.  Names of people we met and places we visited.

But there are also images and situations that are ingrained in my brain.  Carved into my heart.  Embedded in my soul.  Moments that I can still see and feel so vividly.

One of those moments was the feel of a little boy sitting on my lap. 

On our last evening in Haiti our group got to attend the worship service at the Love A Child orphanage.  Just like kids at my church, many of the kids at the orphanage struggled to stay focused and sit still.  They whispered to each other.  They wiggled in their seats.  Two girls across from me temporarily switched sandals with each other.  Their eyes drifted around the room when they should have been praying or singing. 

(Thanks to Alyssa for capturing the moment!)

One little boy wandered over near where I was sitting and he climbed up on my lap.

I don’t know his name.  I don’t know his story.  I don’t know how old he is.  The only thing I do know is that I was given the privilege of holding that sweet little boy for a few minutes.

He settled in, leaned against me, and started sucking his thumb.  As he sat on my lap I was so aware of all that was around me.  The warm but cooling breeze coming in the open windows.  The quickly fading light of the setting sun.  The warm colors of the sky framing the mountains in the distance.  The wind rustling the leaves of the palm trees just outside the window.  The faces of the beautiful children of all ages throughout the room.  The compassionate “moms” seated with the children.  The sound of foreign and familiar words being sung and spoken.  How comfortable this little boy was sitting on the lap of a complete stranger.  The warmth of his body.

I can describe it no other way than to say it just felt right.  To be there in that room, surrounded by those people, with that little boy on my lap, praising God and praying.  So much had come together to make that moment possible and I knew there was nowhere else I was supposed to be.  There were no other people I should have been with.  There was nothing different that I should have been doing. 

The assurance and peace I felt were unambiguous. 

I am more than familiar with uncertainty and feeling like I have no idea what I’m doing in life.  For all the days and months when I have felt so unsure of the next step to take, I have grown used to the feeling but still wish and pray I didn’t have to feel it so often.

As I considered that certainty I felt in that moment in Haiti, I thought back over everything that brought me there.  Things I said “yes” to.  Opportunities I said “no” to.  Relationships I carefully nurtured.  Relationships I had to let go. 

It’s not to say that I managed to get myself to the one “right” place.  There may have an infinite number of “right” moments like that I could have taken a path to.  But in that moment God reassured me that all I need to do is continue to take the next step and trust.  God will take care of the rest.

And then someone or something at the other end of the room caught the little boy’s attention and he slid down off my lap.  The acute certainly and peace faded, but it left a remnant that I hope to hold on to even when the uncertainly overwhelms me.

Especially in Haiti

Last week I got to travel to Haiti with a group of 12 other Feed My Starving Children staff and supporters.  We spent the week with one of FMSC’s partner organizations, Love A Child, and saw the many ways God is working through Feed My Starving Children food.

I hadn’t even been in Haiti a full day and I was already trying to figure out what I was going to tell people about my trip when I returned home.  It’s always difficult trying to summarize a trip like this in a succinct way that will convey the significance of the trip.  I’ve been home a week and I still haven’t really figured out what to tell people about my trip.  

The trouble is the message I want to convey about my trip isn’t a cohesive message.

I want to tell people how wonderful it was to see so many kids and families who are doing so much better because they have received nutritious food and other help through Love A Child.  Kids are now able to be kids because they don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.  To see kids laughing and running with joy was beautiful.

But I also need to tell people about the heartbreaking situations most of us would rather not hear about.  We saw far too many children and families who are malnourished and desperate for food and other resources.  There was the mom who brought her two year old to the malnutrition clinic- the little boy could barely stand and weighed only 17 pounds and I don’t have much hope that his two younger siblings at home were better off.  The nuns who must decide if they can continue to risk their own lives and their physical safety in order to care for orphans and others in great need.  The isolated villages that have yet to be reached with the clean water, medical care, and food they so desperately need.

There is the tension between hope and despair.  The message I want share about my trip is somewhere in the tension between celebrating the truly incredible ways that God is transforming lives in Haiti and lamenting the hold that evil and death still have in Haiti.

But this is a tension we live in everyday.  It’s just not always as evident as it is in Haiti.

We live all the time in the tension between good and evil, the tension between life and death.  No day, no person, no situation is completely good or bad.  Nearly everything is somewhere in between and knowing what to do with this “in-between-ness” is challenging to say the least.     

Today is Holy Saturday (or Awkward Saturday as I like to think of it)- the day in between Good Friday and Easter.  On Good Friday we remember the most horrific death of Jesus.  On Easter we celebrate with incredible joy Jesus’ triumphant victory over death.  And on Holy Saturday we have to wait in the tension between death and life.

On that first Holy Saturday, most of Jesus’ followers had lost all hope.  In despair they hid out in fear because they thought it was all over.  But a few of Jesus’ followers kept their eyes open for signs of new life.  They waited trusting that even in this unbearably horrible situation God was working.  And God sure was at work.

We must recognize the brokenness of the world we live in.  Just like Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross were real, the suffering and death in Haiti and so many places around the world are real.  While we often find it so difficult to see beyond the suffering and death, we cannot let them cloud our vision forever.

Just like life was imminent on that first Easter morning, new life is at hand if we look carefully for it in our world.

Hope is looking actively looking for glimpses of new life.  There is still hope, especially in Haiti.