July 7, 2009--How I'm Really Doing

As I was laying by the pool this morning, soaking up the Haitian sun and reading Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, I realized that the updates I have been sending do not give you an accurate picture of the place where I am.

I then realized this is one of the tools the enemy uses to keep Haiti in the situation it is in.

After being here for over a month, the smell of burning garbage only bothers me occasionally. The pungent odor of rotting food at the street side market fails to crinkle my nose any more. The sight of children running around without pants covering their bottoms has ceased to shock me. The bruises on my back from riding in a tap-tap no longer bother me, as they have just become part of the daily routine.

And then I think of how accustomed I am to having my breakfast prepared and served to me. Of having my bed made and new towels delivered each day. Of having someone else drive me everywhere I go.

And then moments like last Sunday flash in my mind. A team from California was here, and they had collected school supplies and backpacks to distribute to children. Their Vacation Bible School participants had put kits of supplies together as their service project during VBS. So the team had brought enough supplies for around 300 backpacks. After everything was assembled, we took 150 of those backpacks to a school in Delmas 31, very near where my hotel is. They were having church on Sunday morning, a fact that I had somehow missed in the communication of the day. So I was not dressed to attend church. In Haiti, you put on your very best clothes to attend worship on Sunday. On this day, I simply had on capris and a tank top. We arrived at the location to find the church service in progress. After a quick tour of the school building, we were told that we were to join the congregation upstairs. Expecting to quietly enter the service and stand in the back, unnoticed, I had to quickly cover my hesitancy when I was lead to the front of the church, and given a chair behind the pastor and worship leader, facing the congregation. Many of you know how uncomfortable this makes me, being in front of a large group of people. I suddenly found myself (along with the 7 others with me) to be the center of attention. Thankfully, a rousing praise song was being lifted up to our Creator, so I was not as mortified as I usually would be. I participated in the song as best I could, and then we all sat down. Sunday was the culmination of many hot days here, and by 10:00 in the morning, not a single breeze could be felt anywhere. I think the temperature had to be in the high 90’s already. As we all sat there listening to the pastor, suddenly a man came from downstairs with an old fan, the kind that would be called a box fan, except it wasn’t box-like, more circular. The fan was placed on the floor in front of the congregation, facing the team. Someone found a plug, and suddenly a cool breeze came floating our way.

I was humbled to my very core.
As the entire congregation sat in the still, stifling heat, there I sat as an honored guest. In a seat of honor, with a breeze cooling my hot face. Who am I, that I deserve this treatment? Why should I be the one receiving the blessing of moving air?

The welcoming faces, the constant cheek kisses and greeting, Bondye Beni ou (God bless you). Because I am American? Because I bring things to these people? No, simply because I have come where they are. To share in their lives with them. To be part of how they live, if only for a short while. All of this came flooding through my mind this morning as I lay by the pool. Why? I believe God gave me a moment of clarity. A revelation that my complacency, my lack of communicating life here, is a tool of the enemy. That when I sit down to send an email or update to you, I can’t think of anything “exciting” to share, as I was able to do at the beginning.

Do I have to visit hospitals, or slums, or be holding a baby weighing less than 3 pounds in order to communicate the need here? Or to issue a call for action? Or a severe budget shortfall at the orphanage with the depressing news that if the funds needed do not come, the home of over 130 children will be closed, and they will be sent to live on the streets, or with families that could not provide for them before?

These are the things running through my mind today. I am fearful that in my inability to encourage you to live lives worthy of the calling you have received, that children will continue to suffer and die from malnutrition. That disease will continue to spread. That God’s precious people will continue to be broken and desperate for a cool breeze, for a kind word, for the hope that only comes from our Living God.

I pray that somehow, in some way, you come to know and understand what God truly requires of us, His chosen people. He does not require us to have homes worthy of a magazine spread. He does not require us to enroll our children in every sport and activity to build their God-given potential. He does not require us to attend worship services every weekend, or to live in Haiti for two months. If he does not require these things of us, what does He require?

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to humble yourself and walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8 (AMP)
In the same way, “let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents…So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Philippians 1:27-28a, 2:1-4 (ESV)
And what are these interests that are at the very heart of God? External religious worship [religion as it is expressed in outward acts] that is pure and unblemished in the sight of God the Father is this: to visit and help and care for the orphans and widows in their affliction and need, and to keep oneself unspotted and uncontaminated from the world. James 1:27 (AMP)

All the emphases above are mine, yet they reflect what I think God wants us to see this day. The connection between what God requires of us, how in humility we look to the needs of others, especially the needs of orphans and widows.I pray this blesses you and prompts you to think of how this looks in your life.