caged

God loves these people. God loves these people. God loves.

For the first part of the time in our cage, these were the words repeating over and over as I stared out at ground zero, Port-au-Prince, no longer viewing it second hand through video or pictures but first hand through a metal cage on the back of a truck (I'm going to save the explanation of "the cage" for our team blog, you'll be able to read about the whole experience here http://relief.theworldrace.org/ sometime late tomorrow).

I know each of us in the cage wanted nothing more than to be able to jump out and go do SOMETHING: help clear something, fix something, start somewhere, anywhere… my heart cried out for the destruction everywhere we looked. What was even harder was that although I expected the destruction, I had expected to see some sort of clean up or rebuilding efforts underway. But, there didn’t seem to be any evidence of either. It looked as if 5 days, not five months, had passed since the earthquake hit.

The more we drove, the more brokenness God placed before me, the more overwhelmed I became by the enormity of it all. It was in the midst of this, when all I wanted was to stop seeing the brokenness, the toppled buildings, the burning garbage heaps, when I thought I couldn’t handle seeing another person living out their life in the middle of sprawling wasteland, that God reminded me that there isn’t anything which has been broken that He can’t make new again.

I was reminded of my own history, and how it was only by God completely breaking me, shredding apart every last fiber of my heart, that He was able not just to heal my own personal brokenness but give me a new heart, a heart transplant, the heart he intended and designed for me to have all along.

And this, I am convicted, is what God is doing here in Haiti. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that if then any be in Christ a new creature, the old things are passed away. Behold all things are made new. God isn’t just going to “fix” Haiti. His plans are so much bigger than that/ He is reconciling His bride and bringing His people back to Him; He is giving them a heart transplant.

All this destruction is not evidence that God has left or forgotten Haiti. The bible is the most epic love story of all time. From Genesis through Revelations it does nothing but show how far God will go to pursue humanity, even when they reject and run from Him. Even when it may look like His hand isn’t on His people. This book of Isaiah is a perfect reminder of this. After coming back from the two hour ride in the cage I sat in Isaiah 49:

For the LORD comforts his people
and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.
But Zion said,
"The LORD has forsaken me,
the Lord has forgotten me."

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!

See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are ever before me.”

What began as an overwhelming sense of helplessness for not being to do anything to “fix” Haiti, and anger that relief efforts appeared to be nonexistent (as if the world was already forgetting this place), ended with the realization that it is not about rebuilding the physical, but restoring the spiritual; the work to be done here is not about fixing, but reconciling. And, most importantly God reminded and convicted me that while some things may seem impossible or hopeless to us, absolutely nothing is too big for God – “I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?”. I am filled with hope for Haiti - nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37). And, without question, we have seen that God is very much present here in this, but I’ll leave those stories for another night.