Skip to main content

Haiti 2012: June 8

There is a sense of accomplishment and lightheartedness as we ended our final day here at the orphanage. Our perspectives shifted often from outward to inward: a focus on each other and inside ourselves. I personally expected my work ethic to be tested, believing we would be working consistently and hard. While we did work hard at times, though, it was not burdensome. In fact, we took joy in our work together because-- I think-- we worked together. We shared the burden and the satisfaction of our work, the labor and the glory from it. This sense was, for me, just one example of the larger lesson I believe God continues to teach me, both here and at home: that despite our common tendencies to put off and be put off by others, despite our sensitivities and our judgments, our disparate temperaments and differences in social awareness, we are meant for each other. Slight and deep conflicts alike were all overshadowed by the common goal and common faith we shared while here, a reminder that God can redeem our brokenness and heal us, then use his people to care for the orphan and widow.

This current of thought I'm reminded of helps me see yet another, equally important truth: God pursues us. He is after us for our good. He wants us to know him for his glory and our peace, and embracing his commands rather than rebelling against them leads us there. I think the greatest lesson I learned while here is that our God is the same God in Haiti as in Stockton. He seeks our good, writing for us one more page of the story that is our lives when we hear and follow, and no person and no circumstance can change the author. Torn and shredded as these pages may be, God makes it the more decisively his when we truly offer it to him. This is true for people like me, for churches like ours, and for countries like this.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...

Persuasion

At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...

Experiment

My social studies students and I are studying Islam right now. The other day, we were reading about one of the Five Pillars, zakat (charity in Islam that means "that which purifies"). Muslims believe that giving away money helps to purify it and also "safeguards [them] against miserliness" (1). I asked the class if this was true, that giving money away makes us less greedy. They generally agreed that it does. I wanted to test whether or not they really believed this, so I handed a volunteer a $10 bill. I told the class that I would ask for the bill back the next day. I said that they should pass the bill around among their classmates, and that as a result, there would be no way for me to know who had the bill. For that reason, whoever wanted to keep the money could keep it. Even if I did learn who kept it, I told them, I would not punish that person. I wanted them to be motivated by their own honesty. The next day, I asked for the bill, and a student handed it to me...