Seeing pictures and video of the utter devastation in Haiti breaks our hearts. At the same time it challenges us, asking questions of us. In the movie Hotel Rwanda about the Rwandan genocide of 1994, an American newsman makes this remark about the video they will send back to play on television. “I think if people see this footage, they'll say Oh my, that's horrible. And then they'll go on eating their dinners.”
Seeing pictures of poverty and destruction, and balancing it with our own prosperity is difficult. I began to wrestle with this daily while teaching at an inner-city school in Atlanta. Each day you awake to face the challenges of broken homes, violence, lack of resources, limited opportunities, exploitation, disease and the realization that you have been given so much. Some young men and women make it out of that life, but far too many fail to realize their potential, or lose their lives way too young due to the circumstances that surround them.
Now living in a developing nation, the situation is magnified. Everyday we walk among people missing arms and legs, those who are blind with faces disfigured, mothers begging for food with their children, laborers working under horrendous conditions to make a little more than a dollar a day, and many, many more. Just last Saturday we visited a small mountain village outside of Addis Ababa. As we drove up, we passed more and more women, bent over at the waist, often barefooted, carrying seventy-five pound bundles of wood on their backs to the market several miles away. This type of labor is all too typical for people here just wanting to eat.
I came across this song describing the disaster and feelings that some of the Haitian people are feeling. It’s entitled “Far Away” and talks about how it’s easy to think God is far away at times like this and in horrible situations. (it’s hip-hop/rap, just so you’re warned :))
I wish I had answers and good responses to these situations. I tend to waiver between compassion, hope, despair and numbness. Even when seeing it daily, it’s easy to forget the plight of the poor. Let us continually remember them, pray for those in despair and ask God to move us in a wise and loving response. In the words at the end of the video, “help us be the church.”
Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.
My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge.
Psalm 62:5-7
