I have spent the past five days with
the Searchlight participants urgently praying for Haiti. Our prayers
are being answered. Light is infusing the darkness as we speak. This
article from Ron Hutchcraft Ministries illuminates the faith rising from the rubble.
CNN and other networks went to church today. In Haiti, that is.
Because the faith celebrated there today has become part of the story
of Haiti’s darkest hour.
It’s not a surprise to those of us who have been with these precious
brothers and sisters. Some of them live every day with a tenacious
faith that sustains them through their grinding poverty. And when they
worship, it’s not all buttoned down like so many American churches.
It’s exuberant!
That’s why the CNN reporter at a Haitian Sunday service had a hard
time hearing the anchorwoman on the other end. Yes, their church was
destroyed by the earthquake.
But that didn’t stop them. They worshiped in a nearby park, patching
together a platform from wood scraps and somehow finding a generator
and a sound system. Those Haitian believers were clearly experiencing
the Presence of God in the middle of the death and destruction all
around them.
One reporter seemed almost incredulous at the faith he had
encountered. “Everyone we’ve spoken to – they’re not questioning God;
they’re thanking God. We see spontaneous processions through the
streets of Port-au-Prince, joyously praising and thanking God. At times
like this, so many people’s faith has defied the odds. That’s what’s
pulling them through.”
Defiant faith. That’s what it is. Not faith that denies the awful
grief of having lost someone whose death and final resting place they
may never be able to confirm. Not faith that doesn’t struggle with
where to go when you’ve lost most of the little you had. Those
realities are painful, undeniable. But for all the pain and loss on
their scale, they have something on the other side of the scale.
Something – or Someone – who balances the scale on the side of hope.
And the world is watching and listening. What they are seeing is a
power that is greater than even life’s most overwhelming shocks.
Because its Source goes beyond this life.
Put simply, their life is in the hands of a Savior who conquered
life’s most fearsome enemy, death. Who, according to history, walked
out of His grave under His own power. He stands above all the religions
and prophets of history as the only Man who validated His message with
a resurrection. Most every religious leader has promised eternal life.
But only Jesus proved He has it to give.
What we are seeing in the defiant faith of the believers of Haiti
is, in short, Jesus Christ alive. In them. The Bible describes this
infusion of uncrushable life this way: “In His great mercy He has given
us new birth, into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). Hope that is a Person, not a religion.
