God in Haiti

As I prepared to go to Haiti I was considerably worried that God might use this experience to ask me to do something new, big, and scary (like move to Haiti and be a missionary or adopt a few Haitian children).  I’ve prayed some pretty bold prayers over the past year or so and God had started to provide some bold answers to my prayers.  And I was scared the rest of the answers would be in a form that required me to step way out of my comfort zone.

While I was in Haiti and in the few weeks I’ve been back from Haiti, God has provided me with undeniable peace and reassurance that I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing in this season of my life.  No need to buy a one-way plane ticket to Haiti and start learning Creole.  Whew.

BUT, I’m not off the hook that easily. 

God often does ask us to do things, but I have come to understand that God is much more concerned about who we are rather than what we do.  What we do will please God if we are the people God wants us to be.  Our actions follow from who we are.

God didn’t ask me to make a radical life change and do something different, but God did use my experience in Haiti to start to teach me to be someone different: someone who more fully recognizes and rests in God’s unceasing presence.

I have problem with control.  I wish I could control every detail of my life and have every last detail planned out, and boy do I try.  As you might guess, trying to control every aspect of my life doesn’t work out very well for me because life just doesn’t work that way.  I’m often left grasping, worried, anxious, and frustrated.

But God has something better in mind for me, and God is using my experience in Haiti to help me become more like the person God intended me to be. 

Since I returned from Haiti, I have been overwhelmed (in a good way) by all the places, situations, and people I have seen God’s abundant hope, grace, and love.  Almost literally everywhere I turn, in every circumstance, in so many of my interactions with other people I have been overwhelmed by seeing and being aware of God’s presence.  I’ve seen God working out the details.  I’ve seen God transforming people.  I’ve seen God taking care of the minor and the major issues.

Maybe it was because of all the evil, death, and desperation I saw in Haiti that I HAD to look for God to have something to hold on to so that I didn’t lose all faith and hope in God.  In a place where living conditions are so bad you think God wouldn’t and couldn’t be present, God was indeed present when I looked.  Something “clicked” through my intentional act of looking in Haiti that has allowed me to better notice God in every person, every situation, every part of Creation. 

As my awareness of God’s presence has grown, something shifted in me: I’m not bothered that I can’t control everything.  God is here and God is moving in powerful ways.  I’m just along for the ride.  Recognizing this has allowed me to rest and trust in God’s presence.  

And it is so good.

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.

Hope Like Nothing Else

Today I experienced Church, the capital "C" kind of Church.  I don’t mean the buildings where many people gather on Sundays to worship.  Yes, I did spend time in what people think of when they think of “church”, but we don’t always find the “Church” in these buildings and in these buildings is not the only place where we find the “Church.”

What we should think of when we hear “Church” is the vast and hodgepodge group of people around the world who are followers of Jesus.

Today I saw the Church manifest itself as:

• People who stand up and reach out to support each other when it means getting nothing in return and even if it means giving up so much more than they ever bargained for.
• The men and women who preach Truth.  Those people who help us to remember our salvation and challenge us to discover how to respond with abundant love.
• The children who participate in a different yet just as vital role in the Church.  The young ones who more often than not understand better than adults the grace, love, and surrender God asks of God's people.
• The people who aren’t willing to let their relationship with God decay, who seek out every opportunity to enter into a deeper relationship with God, even doing what our culture tells us is not “cool” to do.
• The people who know that Church is not one hour a week, rather they daily and hourly live a life of being available to say “yes” to what God calls them to be and do.
• Groups of people who work together and in the end accomplish far more of God’s will than anyone thought was possible.
• People who are willing to be vulnerable, to share the profound pain and joy of God working in their lives.
• The individuals spending their lives passionately spreading the word about how God’s love is being manifested in our world.
• The leaders who acknowledge they do not have all the answers and are willing to submit to God’s leading.
• People willing to sit in silence, to listen to God, to be honest about what they hear.

I wish more people would think of what I experienced today when they hear the word “Church.”  As a collective group of people we have too often failed to be what God intended God’s people to be.  However, when we are able to push aside all the wreckage of our sin and failure and see glimpses like I saw today, the Church gives me hope like nothing else in this world.

Awkward Saturday

The proper term for today in the church year is “Holy Saturday”, but if they had asked me I would have called it “Awkward Saturday.”  It’s awkward because it is the day in between the greatest tragedy in history and the most triumphant event in history and it leaves me trying to figure out how one is supposed to feel and act on such a day.

We are supposed to be in mourning because Jesus was crucified on the cross, a horrific painful undeserved death that we remember each Good Friday.  But I know that tomorrow I won’t have to mourn because Christians around the world will be celebrating Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.  So why waste time and emotion mourning?  Why bother feeling the guilt and pain of knowing that I and my sins are the reason Jesus had to die?  It would be so much easier to just bypass that sorrow and celebrate but then I feel guilty for not recognizing the sorrow of the crucifixion. 

Even if I could figure out some sort of compromise between mourning and rejoicing, doing anything besides mourning and doing anything besides rejoicing would tarnish either extreme.  It’s awkward.

And so on Awkward Saturday I am forced to embrace the tension between Friday and Sunday, to struggle to find a balance, to consider all that the tension means.

But what really frustrates me is that the awkwardness doesn’t stop on Easter Sunday.  In reality, an awkwardness on a whole deeper level began that first Easter Sunday.  It is the awkward period of time in history, that in-between period when we know Jesus is coming back some day to restore the world to the perfect creation that God created in the beginning but we still have to wait for an unknown amount of time in this mess of a world for him to come back.

It’s not just awkward like an uncomfortable awkward conversation you have with someone you just met.  It’s an acute tension between now and what is to come.  The tension between the complete brokenness of humanity and the earth and a world of perfection on a level we cannot even comprehend.

Humanity has been waiting for about 2000 years and I’ve often felt impatient waiting while there is so much suffering, brokenness, and anguish.  I know I should continue to have hope and look forward to what is to come, but I often can’t see past the suffering and our feeble attempts to repair the brokenness of our world.

We must live in the awkwardness and the tension.  It is the longing for restoration that drives us to work for restoration, to turn to God and seek what we can do to be a part of God’s plan for restoration.

Just like the resurrection means nothing without the crucifixion, the restoration of creation means nothing without experiencing the brokenness of it, without struggling to understand, without so many failed and some successful attempts to create a better world.

Thank You

Congress has gotten a lot of criticism lately, and I'd like to get on that bandwagon even though I may be a little late.  What made them think that they could just close things down when they couldn’t get along, when they couldn’t figure out a solution, when they couldn’t act like adults and compromise?  Did they not realize that their actions had awful consequences for so many people in our country and around the world?  

Most of us don't have the option to do what Congress did.  Most of us can't just say, "Well, this is too hard.  We can't figure out an easy answer or compromise, so we'll just shut things down for a while and wait for the other guys to give in or figure out an answer."  Yes, I know this is a huge simplification of the whole situation, but the real point here isn't to dis congress, but rather it is to thank all those people who don't close things down when the going gets tough. 

The truth is we all have to deal with the tough stuff.  We have to do things that are extremely difficult, we have to engage with the pain and brokenness of this world, we have to live in an imperfect world where some days one thing after the other goes wrong. 

And it’s hard.  It’s really hard.

But you do it.  Day after day.  Some days you may question why we must keep going, why it must be so difficult, but if you keep going please know that you are doing something spectacular.

There are the teachers who patiently care for and teach their students even when they don't have the resources they need, their students and parents aren’t always the most cooperative, and the system doesn’t lean toward doing what is best for the students. 

There are the pastors who are on call 24/7, counsel people through grief and crises, preach the Truth, and care for their congregation in so many ways through much sacrifice.

There are the non-profit organization leaders who make the most of few resources to do incredible work to solve some of the world's biggest problems and who help people who many would consider to be beyond help.

There are the lawyers who fight for their clients and for justice in a system that isn't always on the side of justice.

There are the doctors who relentlessly search for the best treatment for their patients even after so treatments many have proven ineffective.

There are the parents who continue to love their children even when exhaustion sets in and who give second chances and show “tough love” to help their children become the people they are meant to be.

There are early mornings, long days, late nights, disappointment, tears, stress, pain, heartache, moments of panic, days of grief, fear, loss, injustice, anxiety, financial struggles, insecurity, disasters, horrific accidents, devastation, illness, and rejection.

With all this, it takes great courage to keep going.  It requires an enormous amount of endurance and patience to not give up.  Most of all it demands hope.  And for as long as you don’t give up somewhere inside of you are courage, endurance, patience, and hope.

Thank you to all of you who keep going.  Thank you to everyone who has the courage, the endurance, the patience, and ultimately the hope it takes to say, “Yes, this is really awful and I want to give up, but I will not let all that is difficult stop me from trying to bring about what is beautiful.”

You give me hope.  Thank you.