This is a post from Seth Barnes, director of Adventures in Missions from his blog “In the Midst of Death”. Check it out along with the video from CNN.
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.
