a year ago...

I feel like I have to write a post today, but it's hard to know what to say. A year ago a massive 7.0 earthquake hit the tiny island of Hispaniola, rocking Haiti and destroying the nation's capital, Port-au-Prince. Hopefully we all know that by now. Hopefully some of us remember. Hopefully a few of us care.

I've read more articles than I can count and they say the same thing. It's not much better. The people are still homeless and hurting. Jobless and distressed. Atlanta's Eleven Alive news gave Haiti about 15 seconds this morning. They sent their pity and the anchors' solum faces.

When thinking back on the last year I can only really reflect on my own heart.

Today, a year ago I was glued to CNN. I had always liked Anderson Cooper, but for the first time in my life I respected him. I watched him carry a teen bleeding from his head through the streets while a pastor that I listen to fairly often watched a Haitian bleed to death in the street from behind a guarded wall. Who would have guessed the celebrity would play the good samaritan?

I'm not sure I've ever been so angry. So passionate about something that I knew so little about. Before January of 2010 I could have told you very little about Haiti. I knew it was in the Caribbean. I knew the people were black. I knew it was poor. That's it.

A year later I know her heart. I know her people, bits of her history. I know her streets, her stresses and her struggles. I know pieces of her trials. Her health care crisis, her flawed justice system. Her desperation. Everyday I'm learning more as I read and read. But mostly I know what I have learned about myself because of her.

I am blessed. I am connected. I am healthy. I am wealthy and secure. I am educated. I have opportunities. I have hope. I have it easy.

I think everyone "culture shocks" in their own way. I don't really know my way, but I don't feel guilty. I don't feel like I should get rid of all my stuff and stop wearing make-up. I don't even feel like I shouldn't have spent the last four days at a ball game with fans screaming at a bunch of college students.

Our countries differ so vastly that it's difficult to even understand. How can two places so close to each other be so different?

But in reality the people are very much the same. We are self-centered and self-serving. We are passionate and praise-seeking.

We were created by Him and for Him. We are His image. We are needy. We long for support and relationship. We are hungry. We hurt. We love and we long. We long for something better...better than the sunsets in the Caribbean or the nightlife in the States. We want something that is going to last. Something that is going to make the day worth living. Whether we are stuck in a job we hate, selling fruit on a crowded dusty street, the coach of the BCS Champions, or a stay at home mom...we all want significance. Eternal significance.

I didn't walk with God closely or easily while in Haiti but I did think of this from Hebrews 11 often...

By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promises. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God...they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.


The promise will be fulfilled. The city is prepared. The tents will be no more.

Paul Waggoner is FREE!

Thank you to all those who have prayed for my friend LP's release from the National Penitentiary in Haiti. Today it was determined that there is not enough evidence to charge him. You can read more here. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We serve a God who hears and answers prayers!

peace on earth.

At this moment cholera is killing people, thousands of people. Parents are divorcing. People are in need of lifesaving surgery. Innocent men are sitting in dark jail cells. Teens have died in a house fire. And yet we pass each other in the store or on the street or even in church and wish each other a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year.

I have felt very little of the peace that is supposedly on this earth in the last six months of my life...the world has seemed pretty dark.

But the truth is the Baby came. He came into a world that was confusing, lost, and unjust. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords broke through the silence that night, probably (and hopefully) screaming like any other newborn, and his cries changed everything we know. The darkness was perhaps brighter, the cold was warmer, the deaths seemed easier, the broken relationships seemed bearable, the injustice seemed like it just might be made right.

Sometimes I forget. He brought us peace.

That Baby that came..? We treated him like we treat most things we are given. We took advantage, used, abused and killed that Baby. But in His death all the darkness was defeated. The world that often seems confusing, lost, and unjust was redeemed, made new. We no longer have to look at sickness, death, betrayal, and injustice the same. Because God used that Baby to give us Hope. To fix our mess. To save His people.

Sometimes I get bogged down by the brokenness. But the pieces actually will fit together. I confess I can't see it everyday, but then I'm reminded about that Baby crying out for peace and I know that despite the darkness it will come.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

one year ago...

Re-reading my post from January 2010 was very enlightening.

LP

This has been all over facebook (and FOX and CNN) for days now. But if you haven't heard, a friend of mine, who has been serving in Haiti since January, Paul Waggoner (Little Paul=LP), was falsely charged and imprisoned in Port-au-Prince's Federal penitentiary. He is accused of kidnapping a child that died in February at a hospital where he was working. The charges are obviously bogus to all of those who know Paul and should be dismissed by the world as the child's signed death certificate is readily available. Please pray for him and his best friend Big Paul (Paul Sebring) as they fight for justice in a severely corrupt society.

The Paul's established MMRC, an NGO that helps distribute supplies among hospitals in Port-au-Prince. They were life-savers in the flesh for me many times as I needed blood, medicines, and supplies that they somehow were always able to produce. They have most recently been working without sleep fighting the cholera epidemic. I traveled with them up north to work at a cholera clinic in early November. These guys are the real deal. LP is a good ol' boy from Alabama, and he deserves to be home for Christmas. Please please please pray for him.