'HORROR IN HAITI'...ENCOURAGEMENT?

I can’t comprehend what I am seeing on TV. Can you? The ‘horror in Haiti’ aptly describes it. I cannot reconcile the reality of the devastation and suffering of people with what I know to be true and trustworthy in the world.

Where is God in all of this? I am crying out to Him. ‘How can you allow this to happen?’

I know we live in a fallen world, but this, this is over the top. I am wrestling with what I know to be true of Him. I can't stand it.

Looking for something to quiet me--encourage me even, I read from Rob Bell’s book, Velvet Elvis, and he talks about being in Rwanda a few years ago with Pauline who spends her free time caring for aids patients. He says he hiked farther and farther in the slums for what seemed like miles, where he eventually ended up in a dirt-floored, one room shack about six-by-six feet.

He writes, “A woman was laying under so many blankets that all we could see was her mouth and eyes…Pauline had become her friend and had been visiting her consistently…As I knelt down on the floor, I watched Pauline, standing in the corner weeping. Her friend was going to die soon. What overwhelmed me wasn’t the death or despair or poverty. What overwhelmed me was the compassion. In this dark place Pauline’s love and compassion were simply…bigger. More. It is as if the smallest amount of Light is infinitely more powerful than massive amounts of dark. The ground was holy. It is sacred.”

Is that part of an answer I can hang on to? There is nothing else, is there?

Unless I believe there is something else, something more going on here.

Again Lord, help my unbelief.