many questions are asking now

Matt and I were awoken early this morning by the buzzing of our phones... In the early hours of the morning the president of Haiti was murdered in his home. His wife beside him fights for her life, and this dawn the streets of Haiti are empty, homes are silent. A country is in shock, grief, and despair.

We laid in bed and Matt grabbed my hand and said, "let's pray" and only one word in we were both heaving sobs. When you see Haiti in the news, we see Leme.  When you see more devastating news, we see devastated Claudin. Gertha. Granny. Our dear students. Jean Sius. Our precious god-daughters.

Their pain, their discouragement, their shock, their questions, they just overwhelm us every time we pray. 

Evil that has been dominating continues to dominate. Darkness that has been so deep and heavy, it prevails.  

The last few months have been sickening pain after sickening pain, and when a fellow missionary was shot almost a month ago now, we were all in shock and driven to a new level of sadness. 

But this assassination...and all the questions it evokes for the future, feels too heavy for even words. A horrifying season of increasing nightmares seems to peak in assassination and death.

Many questions are asking now, one of our dear friends just wrote me from Cap-Haitian, and yes.

Many questions are asking now.

As I blink back heavy tears under Ben's shiny "Happy Birthday" sign this morning, still tired from a late night of icing a "rocket shooter cake"... trying to make special to a 3-year old boy born in Haiti a day that now feels so soiled... the Lord speaks through to my jumbled heart with His cutting Word.

In Him is life

and that life is the light of men

that light shines in the darkness

and the darkness can not overcome it

John 1

If I say, "Surely the darkness will cover me

surely the light around me will be night,"

even that darkness is not dark to you.

The night shines like the day;

darkness and light are alike to you.

Psalm 139

The darkness over Haiti is so thick I can feel it from here. 

And it is taking ALL the faith I can muster to cling to this hope, to this truth--taking all of my mustard seeds in a time and place where there is NO human proof, where there seems to be nothing but the prevailing of darkness and evil and men

For all the many questions and fears, there are His answers:

Darkness cannot overcome. He is near the broken-hearted.  

The hundred people who rush to my heart and eyes are the millions He is so close to right now.  

His light shines in the darkness.

He is close to those who are hurting. 

Man's darkness is not dark to Him.

As long as that is true, and forever and ever it is,

there is hope. 

As we all cry out today, as we cling to Him, as the world groans and threatens to break, Jesus come.