Skip to main content

Haiti Benefit Concert

I'm going to Haiti again this year, so I shared this tonight at a benefit concert for our Haiti team.

I’ve had the privilege of going to Haiti twice now, and I can say that each trip was very different. On our first trip, I remember thinking that the orphanage was so clean and safe compared to what we had seen in Port-au-Prince; and I left thinking that these children were in such a good place. I came to the second trip with the same understanding, but I left that week with a different mindset. We began to understand from that trip that for all the wonderful things the missionaries had given to these children, they could not always give back to them their parents. These children were still orphans, and for that reason, we saw some of the pain they felt. The directors told us about one boy, in particular, who was very defensive, and learned that his feelings of abandonment came from parents who were still alive and had given him up willingly.

I think some of us learned from that second trip why God names orphans specifically as those for whom the church should care.  Many orphans carry a special burden that we don’t often understand, an abandonment that prevents them from trusting others easily. This means that anyone who commits to loving an orphan must understand the challenge they face, that it is difficult to love those who don’t easily love you in return. As we enter this third trip to the orphanage, then, I think some of us will go with a clearer picture of the responsibility that the missionaries there have, and a clearer sense of the difference we make by supporting them. We hope that we can support the missionaries and children with both our physical and emotional energy. The missionaries can’t give back these children’s parents, but they can commit to the children the love that they have experienced as a result of their own faith in Jesus.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thoughts on Academic Purpose

If I could tell my students how to choose a path of employment, I would emphasize that no effective writer, historian, athlete, musician, or scientist became such without dedicating themselves to some goal. For that to have taken place, however, the respective expert must have had a firm idea about why they were doing what they were doing. In other words, they must have had purpose. Karl Marx spent countless hours in English libraries, I would share, to understand the functioning of society in order to improve it; while Isaac Newton often went without food to gain a firmer grasp of the science of motion, and eventually revised that science. They did this because they had a clear purpose, a real reason for doing what they were doing that would affect others around them. I would communicate that whatever passion students tap into, it should be embarked upon with that kind of clear goal in mind. While they may not know which passions they have yet, I would emphasize that school is a time ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
2 comments
Read more