Two weeks later, and he is still alive

Just finished reading an account of a 35-year-old Haitian man who was pulled out alive from the rubble a full two weeks after the earthquake which devastated Haiti.  Impossible, the authorities had said.  But now, we rejoice in another life saved.

      Why does this story touch our hearts so deeply?  Because it brings us hope.  Never, ever, ever give up.  Many of us are going through trying times right now– not as desperate as being  physically trapped in a fallen building – but there are times when emotionally it takes your breath away, times when there is nothing else we can do, times when we realize that there are things way too big to handle.  Many, many times I used to tell the girls when they were little, “There are some things I can control, but this isn’t one of them.”

     We can have hope, because there is a loving personal God.  And as it said in my Bible this morning, “…and God knew their condition.” (Exodus 2.25)  There are times when God provides deliverance as spectacular as the parting of the Red Sea.  But there are times when God has us exactly where we need to be.  And that is when His strength soaks us down to our very bones.  God is not a cheerleader who says, “You can do it!!!!”  No, He is God, the Creator of the universe.  He says, “Take heart, it is I; have no fear.”(Matthew 14. 26-27)   He is our strength.  He is our hope.   Our culture views hope as wishful thinking.  But hope in the Bible is “that on which I stake my life.”  Doesn’t get any better than that.

For who is God, but the LORD?

And who is a rock, except our God?

--the God who girded me with strength,

   and made my way safe.

He made my feet like hinds’ feet,

    and set me secure on the heights.

…You gave a wide place for my steps under me,

and my feet did not slip.

                  Psalm 18. 31-36

Disaster Relief

In the past week and a half, the whole world has turned its attention to Haiti and the devastation there.  Nations have sent enormous amounts of physical and financial aid to help these people in crisis.  Physicians and relief workers are flying daily into Haiti in full planes laden down with medical supplies, food and clothing.

     As a result of this earthquake, there are many who cry out, “Where was God to let this happen?”   But I am asking “Where were we?”

     Haiti did not become a disaster zone last week.  Haiti has been a place of poverty and despair for more than two hundred years.  It is KNOWN as the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.  I am acquainted with many people who have travelled there, mostly on missions trips, whose hearts have been torn by the conditions in which these people have lived for generations.  My question is, “Why does it take an earthquake, why does it take a catastrophic disaster, before we pay attention to mercy?”  Nations have pledged millions of dollars in aid, the American Red Cross is taking texts of ten dollar donations to send help, and even celebrities have jumped on the band wagon to donate money.  It is important to note, however, the kind of people doing “disaster work” before the earthquake hit.  At the time of the quake, there were 45,000 Americans living in Haiti, mostly missionaries and aid workers extending help in whatever way they could.  That is about the only reason anyone would choose to live there, because of the enormity of the need.  And they will likely be the same kind of people who stay to help after Haiti is no longer in the headlines.  (Historically, look at who is still helping Katrina victims.  Hint: it’s not the celebrities).

      As my friend Becky noted this week, “This situation is not going away anytime soon.”  It is going to take more than short-term emergency response teams.

     This is a country basically without an economy.  BEFORE the quake, more than seventy percent of the population was already unemployed and living in abject poverty.  The largest source of income in the country is based on inhabitants receiving money from relatives living in the United States.  The annual per capita income was $310.  (I just paid more than that in utilities last month).  One of the only means of escape from the turmoil was to secure a place on a rickety boat headed to Miami and hope that you didn’t get eaten by sharks on the way.     

     “Where was God in this disaster?”  He’s wondering when we are going to recognize the need for compassion, not to just throw money at the current situation, but to have mercy.  No matter a person’s worldview, we all recognize that the on-going disaster in Haiti is not the way things ought to be.  People ought not have to live that way.  Life is sacred.  And the sanctity of life is the basis for all social justice.  Why must we wait until a crisis for our hearts to respond to what breaks God’s heart?  

          For the Haitians --or for whomever God has placed on your heart--,

“Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due,

when it is in your power to do it.”  Proverbs 3.27

The Waiting Game

"Waiting on God isn't about the suspension of meaning and purpose.  It's part of the meaning and purpose that God has brought into my life. Waiting on God isn't to be viewed as an obstruction in the way of the plan. Waiting is an essential part of the plan. For the child of God, waiting isn't simply about what I'll receive at the end of my wait. No, waiting is much more purposeful, efficient, and practical than that. Waiting is fundamentally about what I'll become as I wait.  God is using the wait to do in and through me exactly what He's promised. Through the wait He's changing me. By means of the wait He's altering the fabric of my thoughts and desires. Through the wait He's causing me to see and experience new things about Him and His kingdom. And all of this sharpens me, enabling me to be a more useful tool in His redemptive hands" (Paul David Tripp).

Bigger than yourself

Even though the federal holiday is not celebrated until Monday, today is actually the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.   We know him as a great leader of civil rights in this country, a minister who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  He was the catalyst for change, long-overdue.  But in actuality, he was a reluctant prophet. 

The entry for The Writer’s Almanac today says, “He was chosen to lead a boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, when he was only 26. He didn't set out to become civil rights activist; he said later that if he'd known what the job would entail, he might have turned it down. He wasn't even sure he wanted to become a preacher; as a teenager, the way people shouted and stomped in his Baptist church sometimes embarrassed him. But during the boycott, after he was assaulted and arrested and his house was bombed, he experienced what amounted to a religious conversion. He said later that he realized that the movement had far greater force than his own doubts, and that he had to act like a charismatic figurehead even if he didn't feel like one.”

      And what if he had decided to have taken an easier path, one that was safe and comfortable and lucrative.  What if he had told God, “I don’t feel like it.  Find someone else.”  It makes me wonder how many others had a opportunity to spearhead justice and righteousness, but chose a path of least resistance or greater acclaim.  It makes me wonder how many times we do that on a daily basis.  Just because…”I don’t feel like it?”.  

      Let us not lay our plans before the LORD, but follow Him into His plans for us.  Not to ask Him to come into our day, but to follow Him into His.  For this to happen, to have the mindset to do this, God must be at the core of who you are.  Not, as Bryan Loritts says, “with a little Jesus sprinkled on top. “   It comes not from personal ambition, but from a life-changing relationship with Him.  We are culturally programmed to assess change on a yearly basis,  but God calls us to be daily transformed, degree by degree.

     

     He who finds his life will lose it,

             and he who loses his life

                                               for My sake

                   will find it.

                                     Matthew 10.39

Moral Compass

Yesterday, an 100 year old woman died quietly in a nursing home in Amsterdam.  To say her name, Miep Gies, you probably would not know of her.  But you are probably very familiar with what she did sixty-eight years ago.  When she was a young 33-year-old secretary in Amsterdam, she agreed to hide a young Jewish family and four of their friends.  She supplied them with food, books, and protection at risk of her own life for more than two years.  One of the young girls in that group was Anne Frank.  When the family was finally captured, Miep went into the secret annex, gathered up Anne’s papers and notebooks, and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war.  Only Anne’s father survived.  He published The Diary of Anne Frank in 1947. 

       Of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands before the Nazi occupation, only 5200 survived.   What is astonishing to me about this story was Miep’s attitude.  She risked her life for these people.  And she repeatedly denied that she was a hero.  “Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty,” she said in a 1997 interview.  “I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero?  I was not.  I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary.”

     When she was approached about helping to hide the family, “I answered, ‘Yes, of course.’  It seemed perfectly natural to me.  I could help these people.  They were powerless, they didn’t know where to turn,” she said.

     There was a similar mindset among those who lived in the small French village of Le Chambon.  At risk to their own lives and their families, they hid total strangers right under the noses of their Nazi occupiers.  They alone with great courage and ingenuity saved the lives of 5000 Jews.  This was only but a small village, a tiny group of people.  Some of these rescuers ended up in concentration camps as a result.  Years later, when asked why they would go to those extremes for Jewish people whom they didn’t even know, the village people looked incredulously at the reporter and said, “Of course, it was the right thing to do.”

     Fast forward to 2010.  What would have happened today?  The moral compass is no longer pointed to “do the right thing,”  but “what’s in it for me?”

And yet, the Scriptures tell us otherwise.

     “He has showed you, O man, what is good,

       and what does the LORD require of you

       but to do justice, and to love kindness,

       and to walk humbly with your God?” 

                               Micah 6.8

     God gives us the opportunities every day, in huge sacrifices and even in the smallest of kindnesses.  As Oswald Chambers says in My Utmost for His Highest, “But if we do not steadily minister in everyday opportunities, we will do nothing when the crisis comes.” 

     We are all in training.  Keep your compass fine tuned with God at the center of all things.   And may you say, “Of course.  It is the right thing to do.”  Without a flicker of doubt in your mind.