We live in a fallen, unfair, lost and dying world, just in case you weren’t already aware. The good news is we’re being invaded by a kingdom of eternal life, justice, hope, and love (and I’m a part of that invasion). The bad news (or at least the hard to take news) is we’re not there yet. There are still people that live in hopeless situations that will die in those same hopeless situations years from now, or maybe tomorrow. Things aren’t getting easier, and time and time again I see teams come through here and see the tent communities and the broken system and the injustice and, in some way or another, usually solidify in themselves the recognition of one fact: this world can not be fixed by this world. The poverty and despair they see are the result of this world trying to fix itself, hopelessness bringing more hopelessness. Handing out houses where there are needs for houses somehow brings more poverty. Giving food to the hungry somehow creates more hunger. We can not fix this with our money or time, our great ideas or our brand of justice. Trying to bring those things here is, for Haiti, what caused a culture and a system in which the hopeless situations have only gotten bigger. And Haiti is not the only place this has happened. So if we’re truly being invaded by a Kingdom where these things don’t exist, how come our intentions of providing in accordance with the values of that same Kingdom have resulted in a further break down?
No one can live in one of these communities, facing death and despair and find pure joy (not simply laughter but an all pervasive joy) or some way of thinking, some trick of the mind that brings them hope. Yet hope and joy are here, often in greater abundance than what we see at home. Seeing that, knowing that these people are hurting as they watch their children starve and can still say they’d rather we come to pray with them than bring food because food will fade but prayer is where true riches are, THAT is when we’re opened to the fact that ONLY God can redeem this. I’ve watched, time and time again, as the promise of hope we have in Christ is passed not from foreigner to Haitian, but from Haitian to foreigner. The Haitian people get to have the blessing of passing that promise, that legacy of hope, to a people that need it more than anyone else in the world. To a people that want their hope to be in Christ but have really, largely, placed our hope in predictability, security, retirement, salary, government systems, education – and have done so without even noticing. We’ve not noticed so bad that we actually think bringing our version of those things to another nation is the answer, when for us these things have alleviated physical struggle at the cost of impoverishing our spirituality. Does God desire to provide many of those things for His people? Yes. Does His way look like our system? Heck no.
