Misconception #5
There’s something wrong with you if you go to Haiti for ENJOYMENT…
For some of you this might sound like a stretch.
Haiti???
Enjoyment???
I can almost hear some of you say “benny, you do realize they are mourning the losses of family and friends after years of poverty in one of the poorest nations in the world. Many of them don’t have food or water and you’re talking about enjoyment? How insensitive could you be? Don’t you know what they’re going through?”
Well…no, I don’t know what they’re going through. I can’t or don’t want to fully ever realize the trauma that they’ve gone through to be honest. However, I also don’t understand some of the joy that they’ve had through the midst of it. I can understand that God does the most unlikely of things in the most unlikely of places.
God put a word in me for one of the groups the other night and it kind of jumped out at even me. It was basically that He had brought them down here to invite them into His presence to enjoy Him…to enjoy HIM? yup! I thought about it and it actually makes sense. This is why…
As Christians, we sometimes think we’re the ones who are bringing Him everywhere…He is already everywhere and His kingdom is advancing forcefully with us or without us. He’s invited us to come into His presence and reveal with physical eyes what He’s already doing in the spiritual realm. We then just become a manifestation of His character in action.
The thing is, He’s here and revealing Himself in some pretty cool ways. He’s transforming a nation before our eyes and to be honest that’s something to be excited about. That’s something to get joy from. We are indeed supposed to mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice. We as Americans often assume that the Haitians would only be mourning because of their situation. We look at their circumstances and say to ourselves that if we were in the same circumstances, we would probably..(fill in the blank) However, do we ever stop to think that maybe they would react differently than we would?
My point is that many of these people have much to grieve about. Yet, there’s been a joy and a refreshment in some of these people and churches that I haven’t been a part of in a long time. So for those of you that toil day and night in cubicles or jobs you don’t like and have a cycle of living where you’re not quite satisfied and you’re living the independent life…alone…wouldn’t you want to be a part of something raw and real with life and hope and joy spilling forth in the midst of some terrible tragedy? All I know is that I see people alive and I enjoy that.
It comes down to this:
If you believe that they don’t have anything to have joy about, shouldn’t you come down to enjoy them and hope it spreads?
If you believe that they do have something to have joy about, shouldn’t you come down to enjoy it with them and hope it spreads?
