There are many different ways to react and respond to a natural disaster like Haiti’s.I am absolutely certain that I was supposed to be in Haiti during that earthquake. Where I struggle, i s in asking the Why? Why me, why then, why Haiti? I guess the Why is really irrelevant. I trust God with my life, I know that his timing often doesn’t make sense to me or to us, but he sees a much bigger picture than I do, than we do. I don’t believe that God did this, that this is his punishment on Haiti, I do believe that he can take this situation and good can come out of it, it already has.
The first few hours after the earthquake I believe we were all in a state of shock. Shortly after the quake we found each other and congregated with the hotel guests and staff in the parking lot outside of the hotel stone wall. Miraculously we were all ok, unhurt. I remember looking up at the mountains around us previously inhabited with thousands of little cement homes and all I could see now was a great billow of dust. We did quickly get out a phone call to World Vision headquarters to call our families and let them know we were safe and then we waited. We sat on the curb, stood in the parking lot and told stories and tried to calm our trembling bodies. Within an hour it was dark, bringing on a new sense of the surreal. The hotel staff made sandwiches and passed out juice, they took our names to match them with the registration records to ensure we were all there and safe. The ground continued to shake and the wails and cries from the city below made everything feel like a horrible nightmare.
But then the wounded began to come up the hill. They had heard doctors were staying at the hotel and could help. They were wrong. One EMT began trying to help and organize the wounded. We were at a loss for how to help or what to do. I felt so inadequate, so helpless. So I collected flashlights to shine on the injuries so the EMT could try to help. I collected bandages or anything that would soak up blood. I sat with a man who was stroking his daughters leg as she lay dying, a head wound, blood running from her ear. I have a daughter her age, she is my world, this is his Zoë, this is his world. I tried to help a mother distract her small son from his broken legs and head wound. I was in the way, I was useless. As more began to come I became lost for anything to do and went to lie down on the parking lot to get some attempt at rest. Other than help make sandwiches, pass out peach nectar, and help care for a little girl, this was all I did to help.
I struggle with this. I struggled when I was there, many times setting my mind to go do something then feeling lost and not knowing where to start. I struggle with this now that I am home. I should have helped more, had training, done something, anything. What would Mother Theresa have done? What would Jesus have done? What could I have done?
And I am reminded of Jesus, he saw the crowds and was filled with compassion. I understand this in a different way now. I too have sat with the crowds, if even just for a short while. I don’t know about you but it can be easy to dehumanize people who are worlds away from us. It is easy to turn the channel when we are home in front of the tv because we are constantly bombarded with images, or to read that article and pause for a moment before moving on. It is easy to think our lives are difficult, our bills are pressuring us, our finances too tight, we have no money to go out to eat this week, or catch the bus home, our house is too small, our cars too old, our children too whinny. I struggle with these thoughts too. But now I have sat in the crowd. I have had my heart surge with compassion, I have been unable to ignore the hurting wails of a toddler, the agonizing screams of a mother who lost her baby, the pleas of a man relentlessly calling for his wife and his child. I have sat bolt right out of a dead sleep as crowds begin calling up, begging to God for forgiveness, offering him forgiveness for allowing this to happen to them. I have listened to people calling on God and praying out of necessity and need instead of choice and privilege.
You know we are created to respond to the needs of others? Not only an obligation or a responsibility, but created to love like this, to give like this. Just as Jesus had compassion on the crowds. Just as we recognize we are created to worship God with our singing, with our hands raised, we are created to worship God by serving others, responding to the need, sitting with the crowds, crying with the crowds. We are not living in our fullest, experiencing all God has for us when we neglect this part of our God given make up.
In October I was asked to write a monologue piece for the Compassion concert. I prayed about it a lot, read some scripture and reflected on my personal thoughts, and then one night I sat down to write and just prayed, “God direct these words.” After we returned home from Haiti I took an evening out to journal and some of the words came back to me. I believe God was preparing my heart for what I was about to see and hear in Haiti, this is a piece of it:
But God my eyes are not blind, they are raped by slavery and injustice
The putrid stench of poverty lays decaying in our streets
Bitter battles rip and tear and destroy nations, families, marriages
The agonizing cries of children resonate in our schools, our cities, our homes, our churches: lost, damaged, abused
Empty arms long to be held, to be loved, to be comforted, to be protected: cherished
And I can not help but ask, where are you God? where IS your good?
And I see Jesus.
Reaching out his calloused hands to heal the sick
his stable arms leading the blind,
his strength lifting up the crippled.
I see him stoop to bless the children and smile in their faces.
I see his arms stretched wide to embrace this fallen world as he is unjustly dying.
I see the damage inflicted in his risen flesh radiate hope and confidence
and I CANNOT stand,
I MUST kneel and raise my hands to worship.
But through my thankful tears, my humble act of worship, one arm is driven to my side.
To my left, to my right, they are there and I must reach them.
One hand reaching up, one hand reaching out.
To know my Lord, to worship my God, is to defend the poor and needy, the weak, the fatherless, the oppressed.
Where are the hands that heal, lend stability, give strength and lift up?
They are yours, they are mine.
We have been anointed to “preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed.” Luke 4:18
Only then will we truly see God.
My prayer, before leaving for Haiti, was “God give me your heart, your eyes, your ears.” My prayers have been answered and I am overwhelmed with what I feel in my heart, what I see, what I hear…and I am struggling and refuse to be the same.
Be a part of a change of heart, a change of world view. Join us as we link our Fredericton community with a Haitian community, building relationship through child sponsorship and giving them a hand up, not a hand out, toward lasting and measurable sustainability. Actively respond.
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