I'm not exactly sure why I'm posting this, except for that I want someone to share some cumbersome knowledge with tonight, because my heart is heavy. Besides, we could all benefit from a bit more learning in our lives. So much happens around us each day, both good and bad, and most days I think world events pass on by without half the earth's population knowing or caring at all. I'm guilty of this too, though I've tried to improve my awareness of the world over the past few years. Check out BBC News every once in a while. Pick up a newspaper. Read a book.
There's a lot happening.
I've been researching Haiti, which sounds incredibly broad but I mean it: I want to soak in every fact there is to absorb regarding the nation that went from being the 'Pearl of the Caribbean' to the most broken country in existence today, the reasons being many but the top one perhaps being that I want to contribute some of my research in the future to the country and it's progression, for the hopeful better. I'm a Biblical Text major and I want to teach Theology (vaguely put), but much of what I want to focus on and study in Graduate School and beyond regards ministry, cultures, and how the two intertwine.
Which brings us back to Haiti, for it is the culture heavy on my heart. It is one of my (many) loves.
Technically, I'm in college to prepare for ministry as a professor, to make ministry a career. Truthfully, though, it goes much deeper: ministry is found in every element of my life, because when I took on Jesus, I took on living out the Gospel.
Anyway, tonight I'm sitting in a coffee shop (where the reflections always flood in and the divine messages always come to me, these places are just my absolute favorite) reading about Haiti and recording information down, and I'm just overwhelmed. Sometimes when I do my research I easily slide into the academic zone, keeping my face straight and my emotions unbiased, but other times something inside of me wakes up, often a zealous passion, perhaps to rally an AIDS awareness campaign and raise money for medical research that could contribute to the end of what causes many Haitian deaths, or it is a broken yearning, an emotional pull at my heartstrings that hurts, because I can't believe what I'm researching about is real. I can't believe people live in a hell such as this.
You don't have to tell me the world is a broken place, but sometimes I forget just how much. We aren't merely cracked, we are broken people-shattered, hurting, attacked from the outside, and messed up inside.
So that's my heart tonight. I guess I'm posting this because someone else needs to know about Haiti and the brokenness that is overwhelming it.
Not that I'm the only one that has ever been to Haiti, researched Haiti, or cares about Haiti. It's just that tonight, as I was sipping my tea and reading about my beloved country, I wanted someone else to read what I was reading. I wanted someone else to know.
We need to know about the people who are hurting in our world, because even though God sometimes directly intervenes, He has done His part. He came, long ago, to show us how to be an example of love, so that after His departure, while His followers are awaiting His return, we could follow His example and live out His love.
He came. He loved. Now it's our turn.
Jumbled words floating around in my mind tonight:
Widespread illiteracy
Colonialism
Slavery
Sex slaves
Restaveks, child slaves of modern times
Foreign invasions (including U.S.)
Political corruption
Generational cycles of poverty ('poverty begets poverty')
AIDS
All of these areas are ones that plague Haiti. The average person lives on less than $1.50 a day. Children are abused. People starve. The land is overrun and deforested. The men and women both have been taken advantage of and exploited, even by the United States in the past.
Not everyone is called to help Haiti in the way that I believe I am called to. Not everyone is even called to help Haiti. Some of us are called to go and live in Asia. Some of us are called to start ministries in the town we grew up in. Some of us are called to donate money to charities. Some of us are called to pray for nations. Research for other places, other people. Some of us are called to reach out to those in the American workplace or in the local jail or in the orphanage overseas.
Whenever I read, see, or experience the harsh realities of the world, all I can do is cling to hope, because that's the only solution, in the end. To respond to the world's brokenness, we can either give up or we can keep on hoping, keep on striving, keep on loving and abiding in the Father's side.
Whenever I read, see, or experience the harsh realities of the world, all I can do is cling to hope, because that's the only solution, in the end. To respond to the world's brokenness, we can either give up or we can keep on hoping, keep on striving, keep on loving and abiding in the Father's side.
All of us are called to love. I am called to love.
Haiti, my parents, my friends, my coworkers, my neighbors, the person at the grocery store and the person who cuts me off on the highway.
We are called to love.
I need it.
You need it.
It will hold the world together.
