Friday March 6, 2009

Last night I felt sober, sad, focused…sometimes I feel like I get a glimpse of something bigger: how the world really is. How I sit at the hospital and see how mankind is completely broken, sick, and desperate. How I watch the wind roll through the trees and think how all of creation is waiting, yearning for everything to be restored. How the distribution of resources, opportunity, and justice is so unfair. Anissaint, one of our HIV/TB patients, will be well enough to go home soon. But what will he do? Just sit there. There is no work in this country besides keeping your own garden, selling your own crops, which is usually completely dependent on rain, sun, the weather the Lord gives them. No matter how smart you are, how good your intentions are to build a good life, they are beaten down by their world that is Haiti. They go to the Dominican, most likely not so legally, scorned by the Dominicans, to find work. And they come back with HIV…Anissaint, Edmond…

Oh I already miss Edmond’s company…He went for his check up today at the big hospital, and so it’s likely he will go home in a few days. He’s my friend; always asking how my day went instead of bogging me down with ailments, complaints, and can’t you just give me a pill? It’s a breath of fresh air. Sometimes I wish I could really understand what’s going on inside his head. What he thinks of his life, of his illness, what he really thinks of the Lord in the face of a Haiti filled with a church that is self-serving, hypocritical, and unwilling to get their hands dirty with sweat, tears, and illness. Do they really know what Jesus did for them? Do they really know what it means to know him? Sometimes I see Anissaint sitting outside, completely alone, deep in thought; he has to be mulling over some pretty heavy thoughts.

I pray the Lord would show them life.