Haiti redux...

A week from today I will be back in Haiti. This will be my second trip to a place I never imagined I would go the first time. I am going to be visiting some future partners for our Haiti Water Project and check in on some water systems we previously installed. I can't lie...getting ready for this trip has been really stressful. It has been stressful because I got distracted and almost forgot why I am going. I tried to blame this nagging feeling of being comfortable and semi-detached on everything but what it was. I temporarily forgot that I am being given an opportunity to go to a place that needs what I can bring...and it's not necessarily clean water. It's hope...It's the hope we have in Christ... to provide for...to love...to redeem...and to restore us. I feel sad that it's so easy for me to lose sight of that sometimes. It's so easy to be distracted by things that are inconsequential and limited in scope in our lives. We have this interesting thing about going back to places that have done something to us...impacted us...wrecked us in some way. There is this primal pull...this urge that speaks to our soul. I have this theory that we are looking for something we lost...something left behind and in returning we hope to find. Whether joy...peace...innocence...hope or even faith, there is something we seek. My wife says, for her, that place is the ocean...any ocean. Something speaks to her very deeply there and something happens. Of course, we know that “something” is God. There is a transformation and renewal of spirit. For me my place is an unlikely place...a place of profound stereotypes of poverty and where injustices are carved deeply into their national identity and psyches...that place is Haiti. Mother Teresa once said, “When I look into the eyes of the poor I have an eerie feeling that Jesus is staring right back at me.” Jesus himself stated that when we are with the poor we are with him. That certainly is true in Haiti. I both feel and see that played out everywhere I look while there. Honestly, it rattles my cage. It rattles that cage that many of us live in...have put ourselves in. That cage is not only a metaphor for our comfortable minimal risk lives but for our churches. The purpose of a cage is to protect what is outside of it as much as what is inside. We become comfortable and secure knowing there is minimal risk and danger both in our lives and churches. Oswald Chambers wrote,

“Let the attitude of your life be a continual willingness to "go out" in dependence upon God, and your life will have a sacred and inexpressible charm about it that is very satisfying to Jesus. You must learn to "go out" through your convictions, creeds, or experiences until you come to the point in your faith where there is nothing between yourself and God.”

Clearly, we know God is calling us to “go out”...but we resist. It's just so easy to just slip back into living a vanilla, homogenized, and gluten free life. I feel pretty safe in saying that really isn't what Jesus is calling us to. To really follow Jesus is to live dangerously because it involves really loving people, and often times those that are not like us...sometimes very different. If we truly care and want to be agents of transformation, we must be willing to boldly take the risk of loving others despite the possibility that it will be difficult, frustrating and tiring. I need to be reminded of that sometimes...I need to be reawakened. How does Jesus do that ? He shakes us. How does He shake us ? He calls to come out of the cage...our self-imposed prisons and go to risky places and love and serve those in need. In Matthew 25: 35-40, Jesus said,

 'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

To just stand and be present among both the physical brokenness and the brokenness of others lives in Haiti is a reminder of what truly matters. I don't really know about anyone else, but that reminder couldn't have come at a better time for me.