YES, we are ten weeks pregnant, baby due near the end of July. Yes, I am as feeling incredibly sick as I always am at ten weeks, though the cooler weather of December in Haiti definietly beats the August heat we've done previously. One day at a time. Every time I'm throwing up, the girls urge the baby to stop kicking mommy, so it's nice to have a cheering section :)
I'm not the only one! Fanfan's dear wife Majorie is pregnant with their first, and Claudin and his wife are pregnant again, six months (remember they lost their first baby right at 8 months last year). We're praising the Lord and covering both in lots of prayers!
Junior is on his way to the States for another session on his masters, Leme to Port to visit his mama, and everyone trying to rest up for another semester.
My sister, bro-in-law and baby Evie will be here Sunday, and we can't WAIT!
Christmas isn't even a holiday in Haiti that shuts any normal business or daily event down...Maxi's daughter got her vaccinations yesterday and everybody who came to work we sent home. But January 1st? Already people are celebrating, partying, planning and cooking for Haiti's day of Independence.
On the flip side, I must have received 20 emails today from various businesses encouraging me, if I didn't find what I really wanted under the tree yesterday, to look no further than their store. Shop on till you find it, America.
It all reminds me, every year, how badly the WORLD continues to need the same thing it has always needed. The one and only solution that Christmas, celebrated or not, manipulated or not, brings.
Matty wrote the below devotional yesterday for a newspaper we write for, and his thoughts on "the great disappointment" hit home...
There is nothing else. There IS no satisfaction outside of Him. There IS no independence. He continues, God with Us. And the world...we continue to miss it.
Even while living in Haiti, I’m all too aware of the evangelical frustration with the commercialization of Christmas. “It’s not about presents, it’s about Jesus!”. Even this, you see, God has redeemed. It’s hard to admit that secular and capitalist culture is right in a way. Christmas is indeed, all about a gift. However, the great present is God’s very presence. With the birth of Jesus God extends his presence to us in an unprecedented way.
We long to satisfy the hunger pangs of human desire. These longings are good! In fact, these desires and needs that each of us experience are created by God himself!
Each year during Christmas time we enjoy the holiday season with the giving and receiving of gifts. Oh the joy! That joy is linked up to the idea that a desire or need can be met in the giving or receiving of a particular gifts.
Perhaps for some of you it’s not a gift that you love about Christmas. Perhaps it’s simply time with friends and family. I love to sip the newest and best hot chocolates with my friends while engaging in deep and meaningful conversation. I love sharing in the lives of those around me—it’s one of life greatest joys indeed. Christmas is so exciting each year because we have the great expectation that our needs will be met.
At the same time, none of these experiences that we love to enjoying during the Christmas season are sufficient. We go through what I call “the great disappointment” each year. We get that gift we wanted, we enjoy it, we admire it and see that it is good (Genesis 3), and we make it our own. After long, however, the gift wears out and looses its luster, and hunger pangs set it again. We need to fill that void.
The truth is that this is only a void that a relationship with God himself can fill. Being all too aware of this, God sends Jesus. This is the Christmas message.
The banner hanging over the biblical Christmas story is Immanuel, God with us. This is what Christmas is all about.
From the start of the downward spiral of humanity that we encounter in Genesis 3, God has been at work restoring a deep, substantial, dialogical relationship between himself and humanity. As death, decay, corruption, self-centeredness, and a perverted desire for an isolation from God crept into God’s very own story, he sought to redeem—he sought to drastically transform the hearts of men and women to return to a state of deep desire for God.
First, he did it through the written word handed to Israel through Moses. Then, he sent Jesus, the second member of the Holy Trinity.
The writer of Hebrews says this,
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:1–3a, ESV).
God himself took on flesh and dwelt among us—Immanuel. But why?
God’s desire to be in meaningful relationship with humanity, to be the very water of life that satisfies the deepest desires that He created in the human soul, was evidenced through Jesus putting on flesh and sharing his life with us.
Receive the gift this Christmas, this New Year’s, of Immanuel. He wants to share his life with us.
Oh my goodness! Congratulations!! SO happy for your growing family!
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