I am sitting here in my office, hot tears pouring down my cheeks again.
I'm just supposed to be asking my marketing questions, but strangers and friends alike will let you in if you ask. If you hold out your own.
I committed this trip that every single person I sat with I would not release until we prayed. And as I've prayed for man after woman after brother after sister, the Lord has pointed me here and there, the Lord has met us.
Jonas isn't on my schedule today. But he and I are co-leading a church visit in the mountains on Sunday, so he plopped down accross from me after all was done today and we made some final preparations.
And when we finished our plans, he did not go. The Haitian side of me has learned that this pause is not to be ushered out, but to be ushered in.
Didn't take long for him to explain to me why, when he finishes school in a few weeks, he isn't staying on as the IT guy at Emmaus, as we all have begged him to. Food and friends, electricity and water, security and family, fans and a paycheck.
If you've ever read Jo's story, (and if you haven't, just stop and go read it now, and get your own tissues), you know he grew up in an orphanage, abandoned by his family. That orphanage, once flourishing, has been plagued with poor administration, problems, divisions, corruption as many many good starts have (Godly perseverance, people, it is NO small thing), and four years ago they sent 18 year-old Jonas to Emmaus to learn something TOTALLY different, in the hopes that one day, he would come back and somehow redeem the socks off all the expanding broken.
That one day is now next month, and at 22 years-old, he heads back home to become the director of the orphanage he grew up in.
I asked him first if he felt a calling, a heart from the Lord, to do so, or if this was an obligation due to tuition paid.
No, the Lord has given him a heart for four years, as he's watched things grow darker and darker at home, to return to the children he came from, to bring the community and light he's been drenched in at Emmaus to this painful program, this impossible place.
He describes all the many issues, deep issues, dangerous ones even, in a continually unstable major city known for gangs and lawlessness and despair. He describes the conflicts, the challenges, the concerns, the changes that must be made, cultural issues, sin issues, and I begin to feel sick in my stomach.
I have been beside and behind Matt through many such circumstances, and it's brutal. It's lonely. It's heartwrenching. It's ugly. Doing what needs done, leading well, making right, it's the least fun job on the earth.
It is not my desire for my friend, not at all. He quickly admits that his own sister has begged him not to go.
But I see that his heart is already there, right where God has put it.
I see today, unannounced, that when Jonas was a child and utterly abandoned, alone, I see that God was with him, wiping his tears with an intricate plan.
I see that the heartache of his youth has become the heart-cry of his twenties. I see that the pain of his past was utterly priceless, that the future for many children will be altogether different because God boldly has always had his hand on Jonas' frame.
We are here to send out. We don't raise up students in this spiritual oasis that is Emmaus to STAY and serve her. We don't want to keep them, even the best of them.
But as it must have pinched God's heart to send His only son into an ugly world that would doubt, mock and eventually kill him, it pinches mine to send Jonas to a incredibly challenging missionfield that may well cost him everything. As it must have pricked God's eyes to watch His son take up His cross, I'm crying again because it breaks my heart to see Jonas quietly and willingly take up his.
Emmaus sends him, I send him, you send him. We have given him all we have, and he has all he needs to be David against Goliath.
He has a clear call. And a true faith. And the boldness that results. And armor that fits.
And while David's mama must have been proud after, I can't help but think she was glad that she wasn't there to see the battle. And while Mary had always known it was coming, how cruel and unthinkable the day must have been that she stood at her son's dripping feet.
So I'll sit at my desk and cry. And I'll tell you about it because I find Him in the telling, and I need Him.
And I'll be inspired until the day I die by the men and women in my life who continue to sacrifice every comfort, every dream, every ambition, willingly, for the only cause that matters...the same Jesus who never will abandon Jonas, seeking out His lost sheep.
May being inspired never stop at just that.
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