one: pastor

I don't mean to always have so much to share after big trips like yesterday, but man.  they are just so full.

I'm sure we already feel hardly on the map down here in Haiti.  Anything outside of each of our worlds rarely draws our attention or focus.  So to leave my world and drive, ford, hike and literally climb to the very dessert top of a distant mountain seemed crazy foreign to me...must seem a world away to you, too.

Until we got there and I saw God.  Hah!  He's been there the whole time!

Suddenly, I swore I could see the horizon curve into the orb this world is, it felt so small in His hand.

 All this time living in my own day-to-day, and then you're kissing weathered cheeks and wiping snotty noses and holding calloused hands and He has suddenly grown...His world suddenly brought together small.  I'm in it, you're in it, she's in it.  And He's there.

We're all just His creation, and I'm not sure there is a place where we are not.  From my place on the plateau, it would seem that there are no people in the mountains, and yet camouflaged in earth-colored homes on EVERY new hill His creation are tucked.

 And my confidence is restored again that there is no place that HE is not.  No place.

Yes, there are many places in this world where there has been no need for or knowledge of writing and reading...where there is NO doctor...where the drinking water looks like this...where belief in demons and spirits intercedes in all functions of life...where sheer existence seems to be a miracle.

 I saw too much beauty yesterday for any of that to prioritize my heart.

But there are many corners of the world that have been plowed and fished and worn smooth by beautiful people who were created in His image...people who work HARD their bodies and love DEEP their little ones and lay up LATE dreaming, and yet whose eyes are dark by the knowledge of nothing more than the fathers who came before them.  

As I sat with a ti-paket moun yesterday, all eyes fixed on Ezechiel as he shared Christ with his people in a small slap-board church, he called us Pastor.

"Pastors, you must live in the light we have found in Christ.  Pastor, you must give counsel to the many around you in His truth.  Pastor, preach the Gospel where you are.  Ten years ago, not a one you walked with God.  Knew God.  Were Free.  Pastor, you must go out today and continue to preach the truth, because there are so many still living in that darkness our fathers knew so well.  Stop calling me Pastor, and join me, instead."

Yesterday challenged me in so many ways.

One: I cannot keep looking to the Pastor...to the seminary...to missionaries...to _____ to do, to share with others what God has shared with me.  We are with Ezechiel, though we may not call this precious people group on a mountain far away our flock.  

Call me pastor.  I'm calling you pastor, too.