autumn life

it is easy to forget that this is a story, that God has a plan, that something is happening here, that there will be a climax.  there is resolution.

there is reason to hope.  every day.  every moment.  every thought.  we have something to hope in, someone to hope in.  true Hope.

i guess that there has been a lot going on lately.  a lot has changed in these past few weeks.  it seems that my life here is completely different. and with all of these changes i have been greatly encouraged.  i have felt great peace.  i know that God has been sustaining me in these days. He has been strengthening me.  but i also need work.  i need practice.  i do not yet have the foundation of inner solitude and peace.  i do not yet live completely out of faith and hope and love.  

i need rest.  

i need quiet.  

i need space.  

i need solitude.

i need to be able to think, to read, to meditate, to pray.  i need to be still and quiet without interruptions, without distractions.  i need order in my life.  i need discipline.  i want discipline!  i want order.  i want stillness and quiet.  i want to live in the Presence of God.  i want to love people, but i want to Love God!  i want to live for Him alone, to be captivated by Him, to be filled with the fullest delight, to be enamored by His beauty, His radiance, His glory.

it is still hot today, but something feels like autumn.  the color of the sky seems new.  the shade seems cool.  the birds have a new song.  life has a new feel.  i think that it is beautiful and symbolic that autumn, the season of falling, the season of dying things, allows me to experience so much life.  this new feeling has come at the end of a new, tiresome week.  and it has brought with it so much Hope and so much Peace.  

today we are making bread for church tomorrow.  and while we are doing so, i am thinking about the Bread of Life, the Son of the living God, who become nothing, that i might become the smallest something.  

in death we find life.  

in darkness we find illumination.  

in suffering, we find the healing of our souls.   

in the simplest things, we find the fullness of the Beauty of the Gospel.  

may we cling to Life. 

may we resist death.  

may we sing with Joy and cry with Hope.  

may we be broken with Christ and poured out with Love.

home for refugees.

life in Haiti is hard.  it is hard for those born here.  it is hard for those who come.  last night we talked about children's need of love, of affection, their need simply to be held.  i sometimes wonder if more of Haiti's problems lie more in that simple lacking than the lack of food or jobs.  can there be a greater necessity than for a child to be held?  my heart breaks.  

amidst the brokenness of this place, in its true poverty of spirit, and in every difficulty of its life, i have found great peace.  i am thankful for my temporary home here because in this poor soil my soul has come to life.  in the darkness i have seen true Light.  my soul rests in God because apart from Him there is no rest.  and in the face of the hate and hurt and brokenness and poverty i have seen the face of my Jesus, i have touched Him and held Him and served Him.  perhaps i have truly Loved Him for the first time.  

poverty is awful.  it is discouraging and saddening and angering and challenging in every way.  and it is true that poverty itself offers us no hope.  one thing, however, that poverty does offer us is Jesus, in whom alone there is Hope, in whom there is always Hope.  

[ run to the suffering if you love Him and worship Him there, that is where He is found; He is the home for refugees. ]

thank You, Dear Jesus, for sharing Your Joy with me.  may i not be afraid to live Your life. 

decency?

my heart is so heavy.  you know that.  you probably know that i am often discouraged, that i am often saddened by what i see around me.  i hope for justice and there is none, and it angers me.  i hope for kindness and compassion, and yet there is hatred, there is malice, there is contempt, there is fighting.  and you may have thought, with others, that i am living with a burden that i should not carry, a burden that Jesus took for me.  but i do not believe that.  i do not believe that Jesus carries the burdens of pain and sadness, the suffering of this life, for us.  i do believe that He died for us.  i do believe that He took away the burden of our sins, the penalty due to us being paid by His death.  but i adamantly deny any doctrine that says that Jesus died so i would not have to suffer.  Jesus did not die so that i would live a carefree life and become numb and blind to the suffering of this fallen world.  no, He died so that i might not perish with it.  He died so that Love might have life in me, that i might not be hardened by my own sin and the sin of the world around me and become blind to the suffering of this fallen world.  

yesterday i continued to see the brokenness that is everywhere around me.  i worked with a man who has no food for himself or his family, and though he has worked hard for three days now, he will not be paid for another three, and has no way of feeding his family.  and will they go hungry for three more days?  i don't know.  i talked to a woman whose husband i know and have worked with, and she was hungry, and they have no work.  and what should i say?  i am sorry that you are hungry.  but people back home give me money to be here and i have ample food.  in fact, i see food thrown away regularly.  

yet some seem to say, "what can i do?  i cannot feed everyone.  and besides, God has blessed my hard work."  that is absurd.  you who do not believe in good works, you think that God has given you material blessing for your works?  you who say we are still, even with the Spirit of Christ residing in us, we are still incapable of any good thing, and yet somehow you have received material blessing?  no!  God does not bless His children with the material riches of this world.  He blesses His children to share in the eternal riches of His Kingdom.  He blesses His children to share in the suffering of Christ, that they too might share in His resurrection for the dead.  and i would think that if you believe in God's Love, if you have any of His compassion and mercy, if you have any of the meekness of Christ, you would not say, "oh the world is a bad place, but thank God i have salvation, and thank God that He has blessed me.  woe to those sinners."  no, if the world is such an awful place, a decent person would do his or her best to make it better.  and Christians ought at least be decent people.  God have mercy on us for our doctrinal piety and for our outrageous claims to follow Christ without getting dust on our feet.  may God humble me first.  

iPhones and water

i simply feel that now that we've so utterly perfected the walkie-talkie to the point where it has become the iPhone, maybe we could turn the great minds that brought us the Nintendo Wii to, say, getting fresh water to the 1 billion people on our planet who don't have it.

                                    - colin beavan, author of  [no impact man]

for warmth

i hold my face between my two hands

                   no i am not crying

i hold my face between my two hands

          to keep my loneliness warm

                   two hands protecting

                   two hands nourishing

                   two hands to prevent

          my soul from leaving me 

                             in anger                          

                                    - thich nhat hanh

farm.

i would like to have a farm one day.  i would like to live a quiet life, to rise early in the peace of morning and put my hands to work, to let my spirit out to pray, to find myself connected to God in the mysteries of His Creation.  i would like to sow in silence and reap my harvest with adoration and thankfulness.  i would like to be nourished modestly by that which i know intimately, by that which i have thoughtfully considered.  i would like to be surrounded by humble creatures working the modest fields of redemption.  i would like to retire early to a quiet place free from the noise and glow of the technological world, a place wrapped in the warmth and familiarity of a worn body and a waking mind.  i would like my life to be illuminated by the flickering candle of Faith and Hope and Charity, and to give off the sweet aromas of Peace and Joy.

i would also like to be a pilgrim.    

disconfidence

i have to apologize, because i have done a poor job of sharing with you about my time here in haiti.  my mom told me that some of you have asked about things here, and i confess that even she cannot tell you much of the details.  and i am not sure why details are so difficult for me to communicate.  partly it is because of my romanticized view of writing, in which i desire to sound intelligent and philosophical and wise, none of which i am.  partly it is because i am a cynic and a pessimist, and i am aware of this, and i do not wish for you to see this.  i loath complaining, yet i am quite prone to it myself.  partly it is because i am too tired.  physically i am not often that tired.  but mentally and spiritually and emotionally, it feels as though i am always tired.  and i do not want for you to think that i am suffering greatly, because i am not.  haiti may be a poor place, but i am still rich.  it is just that this life is very different from the one that i am used to, and it is taking me quite a while to adjust, and when it comes time to write, i rarely feel confident to communicate the details of my life in a way that conveys joy or hope or peace or truth.  and also, most times i feel embarrassed by how little i really have to share.  the difficulties are numerous, though i still believe that they are blessings.  and the joys are so small that i often am afraid to try to share them, for fear that reason will convince me that they are too small to be joyous.  i do not believe that, and i eagerly hope for the confidence to soon share them with you.  

Holy Sadness

these past few days have been heavy with sorrow and sadness.  my heart is tired.  and though i wish that it were not so, i am not discouraged.  i am not frustrated or angry or anxious.  and though each conversation has seemed to take a little more out of me, and even the smallest statements seemed to be arrows at my fragile soul, each has been a blessing of its own.  because with each word has come more poverty of spirit, and i have been left with nothing but to seek the solace of Christ.  and He has gladly welcomed me, and assured me of Faith and Hope and Love.  He has assured me that His kingdom is not of this world, and that He is still choosing the foolish to shame the wise, and that to be His disciple, one must still lose his life and carry His cross. and He is reminding me that to cling to the ways of this world when one has beheld the glory of His life is the greatest folly of all.  

Godly sorrow leads to repentance.  Holy Sadness leads to insurmountable Joy.

perspective.

i have been given a beautiful new perspective during these past 30 some days.  i have had a good life, and i have much to be thankful for.  i have known a lot of great people and lived in some great places.  i have seen a lot of beauty and heard a lot of hope and beheld a lot of love.  i have endured a few struggles here in there, most of them less traumatic than i thought.  but i can say that after all that my life has been, brief as it may be, i look back on it all with great peace.  and at times, when i sit here having lost so much of it, longing for that life for which i was living with all my being, i am reminded of the life that i have been given, and the life that i have been promised, the life for which my spirit groans.

i do miss america.  i miss the beauty of its bohemians, the hope of its dissenters, and the strength of its sprawling landscapes that refuse to give in to the confines of man's tiny imagination.  i miss the hope of the kingdom that is rising amidst the rubble of its empire.  and i am reminded that hope is mysterious, that it is not anchored in people nor place nor idea, but in the Living Christ, the Hope of Redemption.

live boldly.  love irrationally.  don't be afraid to say no.  be less afraid to say Yes!  turn your back on lies.  challenge the powers that say you have no choice.  tell them you are willing to die, because you are already alive.  take back what is God's, and offer it to Him with joy.  

be still.  be poor.

love.

come to find out, maybe serving is always difficult.  maybe the most impacting love is also the most difficult to give.  surely if Christ's is the example of the greatest love, it is also the example of the most sacrificial.  so am i not also a fool to think that i can love greatly without sacrificing greatly?  am i not also a fool to think that i can love greatly without being humbled greatly?  may i always be reminded that Christ did not love in order that He might be glorified unto man, but unto God, and that so He might love the least He also become the least.  

love does not seek power, but gives up power, for it knows that power cannot exercise itself in love.  love does not seek authority, for love is more truly displayed in service than in authority.  love does not seek wealth, for to desire wealth is to love oneself more than thy neighbor.  and love is not defeated by the presence of hatred and violence or by the absence of compassion and mercy, but faithfully lives to illuminate such darkness.    

learning, loving, and being loved.

i am fool to think that i can do anything for the glory of God, or that i can change the world.  but i am just as much a fool to forget that God can do anything for His glory, and that He is, in fact, changing the world.  

i was a fool to think that i was going to come to haiti and be a part of some great thing.  but i was just as much a fool to forget that God does nothing without purpose, that God brought me here with a purpose, and that God has been, and will always be, bringing about redemption in my life, and the lives of everything around me.  

i came here to serve.  and i am trying to serve.  come to find out, sometimes serving is harder than you might think.  but i am learning, because God is teaching me.  and i am loving, because God is love in me.  and i am being loved, by God, by countless little orphan boys, by some very kind and gentle haitian people, and by one precious little haitian dog.  

in the midst of everything stands the loving-kindness of the Crucified.

[ O, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! 

      how unsearchable his judgments, 
      and his paths beyond tracing out! 
   "who has known the mind of the Lord? 
      or who has been his counselor?"
   "who has ever given to God, 
      that God should repay him?"
    for from him and through him and to him are all things. 
      to him be the glory forever! Amen. ]

Beauty.

yesterday we went to the mountains, and i was reminded of the Beauty of the spiritual life, the life of those who abandon themselves fully to the Love of God, to living in the Peace and Joy of His presence, and to Hope in Obedience and Faith.

[ let us walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. ]

peace and joy.

i have come to believe even more that joy is not happiness and that peace has so little to do with prosperity.  perhaps joy is that which sustains you in the midst of your greatest suffering, and peace is what gives you the strength to respond with hope in the midst of despair. perhaps peace is knowing that you are with God, and joy is knowing that Christ suffers with you.