hunker down faithful

Every year the Christmas soccer matches start a bit earlier. A few more games get squeezed into the mix because, reality is, very little makes our students or the people of Haiti happier than a good match de football. Yesterday was first year, the eternal underdogs, vs. third year, and Lily's "walk with Ben" quickly turned into Lily-joined-the-cheerleading-squad and Ben's-stroller-is-abandoned-on-the-sidelines.

I scooped up Nora and headed over to the field to get him, and as we walked a huge rainbow brightened overhead  and the sun came out over the mountain.  I stood among cheering and happily heckling staff and students with my children and the mountains and a rainbow to boot, and I had to stop for a moment and breath.

Breath deeply, now, for all is not well, and you can feel the trouble under the surface waiting to break.

Haiti's in a bad way, friends. Vertieres Day is upon us, the 18th of November, the day Haiti remembers the major, bloody battle between Haitian rebels and the French occupants of 1803. Vertiere is located a few minutes from here, right outside of Cap-Haitian.

Vertieres Day is not really the problem, of course. But all the long-standing, complicated problems of Haiti have been growing, and now are being urged to the surface because it's Vertieres Day.

Calls for action and change are being mingled with calls for violence and destruction.

We are all doing what we can do, of course.  We're sending out our last Emmaus visitor today, a few days early, we've got some extra fuel and food on hand, we've got less students and staff coming and going and more staying this weekend, our annual OMS Thanksgiving has been moved and all weekend plans have been cancelled.

There is a lot of talk, there is a lot happening in dark places and in dark ways...there's a lot more I could say, but I'm not going to.  I don't dwell in darkness and I'm not going to give fear credit.

But I AM going to ask you to be praying.  Please be praying for Haiti these days.  Pray for the many people who make her up, pray for the many changes that need to happen, pray for the process of change, as well.  How long has Satan used violence and destruction to hold Haiti in fear and darkness, in poverty physical and spiritual.

I don't need to pray God strong or able, for He is.  But we do pray for the courage of Haiti's leaders, from the capital to the smallest communities, for those living in Light, for true change, for true peace.

I was studying Jeremiah 17 yesterday in prep for a chapel message, and how powerfully God reminded me the folly of trusting in man (they are like stunted shrubs in the desert, with no hope for the future), the folly of trusting in riches (in the end, they will be poor, old fools), the folly of trusting in the human heart (the human heart is the most deceitful of all things!) and of the final judgement for the wicked, for the oppressors, for the unjust (they will be buried in the dust of the earth, for they have abandoned the Lord, the fountain of living water). 

Lord, Jeremiah finally prayed, if you heal me, I will truly be healed;
If you save me, I will truly be saved.

Haiti's help and salvation continues to be securely in His Mighty hands, and our great prayer is that in the midst of destruction, some will find true healing...that in the midst of fear, some will find true salvation, that in the midst of chaos, Haiti might find true change...That in the midst of scary times, His perfect love will cast fear out.

Hunker down faithful with us and pray...thank you!

Our lives should be an absolute hymn of praise resulting from perfect, irrepressible, triumphant belief.