maybe we are not anonymous.

One of the few luxuries my sister has continued to bless me with even after coming to Haiti is a monthly subscription to "O Magazine: The Oprah Magazine." For those of you who have never read it, yes, the articles are expectedly filled with some ideas I don't agree with. However, the photography is divine, the the writing is consistently good and creative and vivid writing. As a photo-journalist, each issue fills me with creativity and satisfies brief longings for my own culture: jewelry, women in pants, fresh blueberries.

This past issue was on "the spiritual side of life," and it was so interesting to read about dozens upon dozens of people's thoughts on what happens after death, why we are here, and why life is important. It was also quite sad, and I realized that Haiti is just a tiny little fraction of the huge mission field out there for lost and hopeless and blind people.

Since meeting a tirade of young people in college straying far from the Lord, though they knew about Christ, had been "around" God their entire lives, and had been raised in Christian families, I have been interested in what makes our generations increasingly "independent" of needing or accepting God. So I found the article "The Doubter's Dilema" to be quite profound.

"To pray or not to pray? To believe or not to believe? And how to explain the things that look suspiciously like miracles? Kelly Corrigan speaks for a generation of people pulsing with thankfulness but not sure they can give it up to God."

Already I am interested. If you are overwhelmed with thankfulness, what do you do with that thankfulness? Can you just "be thankful" for something, without being thankful TO someone?

I'll share a few more thought-provoking exerts...

"Both my parents shudder over our discerning, noncommittal generation that has something to say about everything, but nowhere to go on Sunday mornings."

"Both of our cancer was gone. But I had not beseeched God to make me well, nor had begged God for my father's life. Among other things, I didn't want to be a user, a phony who thought she could get what she wanted by conveniently nuzzling up to someone she usually snubbed. I liked my friend's take on things: Up with people and their hard work and their cool medical inventions. But I kept thinking back to my father's initial prognosis. The urologist to whom I attributed my dad's stunning recovery had told us to brace for the worst. Ten months later, when he declared my father a healthy man, that same doctor said he couldn't explain how on earth my dad was disease-free. Could I really give all the credit to a doctor who shrugged his shoulders and said it was anybody's guess how my father survived?

"If there is a God, he knows how much I want there to be more to human existence than a series of discrete physical experiences that start with birth and end with death. I want all of us--and all our lives--to be meaningful. But small. I'd be elated to learn that this go-round is only part one of something that has a thousand parts...Maybe there is something between and around and inside all six billion of us, and maybe that something knows every hair on each of our heads. Maybe we are not anonymous. Wouldn't that be outrageous? And beautiful?

"Faith is the tallest order, the toughest nut: the humbling of yourself before purposes you don't--and cannot ever--comprehend. Let's face it, believing that there is a God who might get involved in your tiny little life is beyond anti-intellectual. And this is why I doubt. But when I'm honest with myself, I have to admit that there's doubt within my doubt."

WOW. I want to let everyone think their own things about this, but when she said, "Maybe we are not anonymous...wouldn't that be beautiful?" I was just overwhelmed with YES. IT IS! It IS beautiful. It IS non-sensical. And it IS outrageous.

I think of just this morning. With a few friends in tow, we drove almost 90 minutes to a church way out in the middle of "nowhere." And we passed, literally, thousands of people. Winding dirt paths led us past crumbling mud huts and twisting riverbeds with dozens of women washing clothes and naked children bathing. We passed thousands of people, and I tried as hard as I could, with this article in mind, to look everyone I could in the eye. Snotty nosed children. Worn down old men. Burden laden mothers.

Those thousands of people, largely lost and entirely removed from most of the world, they are NOT anonymous. Our God, He knows every hair on every head we drove by today.

We have a great work: to LET THE WORLD KNOW this. and it is beautiful work.

(pictured: one of Stacey's students was married on Saturday. Sunday, visiting Bay-Limbay)