The Haitian People Need Us

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For 40 years I have been involved with Haiti and its wonderful people who have tried their best to overcome burdens placed on them by foreign governments and their own dictators. Some have been lucky enough to escape the hardship and violence 

I am saddened and angry that Haitian people are vilified by leaders of our own nation.

Certainly, the immigration system needs reforming but what is not needed are racist innuendos, rumors, and lies. The Haitian people are our neighbors, friends, brothers, and sisters in faith. How can we treat them so badly? Christian leaders need to speak out against those who would speak racist tropes against our friends. In what scenario would Jesus ever side with racism of such magnitude?  Below is the impact of such vitriol on the Springfield Community.

“Their community is reeling — confused, frustrated, hurt — from false accusations that they are eating their neighbor’s cats and dogs. The now viral and highly politicized rumors are being fueled by former President Donald Trump, his running mate JD Vance,  and others, and violent threats against the community are upending daily life in their city.

“Jesus is with us in truth, and the truth is that Haitians are not eating pets and geese in Springfield,” said the Rev. Carl Ruby, preaching at Central Christian Church. He invited community members to join his congregation in prayer and peaceful protest of the false rumors leveled against their Haitian neighbors.” -Associated Press Release.

Our leaders are turning us against each other in the name of political expediency. 

Why are so many Haitian people coming to Springfield, Ohio? Not long ago the population was dwindling until some companies moved into the area. There was a workforce shortage and word was passed on to Haitians in various communities in the U.S. They came here to work and worship within the communities. And more money is being given to Springfield to help with any effects of a population increase.

Here’s what one pastor said, “We are united. It is time for good to stand for good,” she said. “This time the city of Springfield, Haitian people, asked the Lord to stay together to fight for good … America is a great loving country, and American people care for people – it doesn’t matter if they are Haitian. We’re against lies.”

My wife and I have supported a young woman in Port-au-Prince Haiti who is training to be a nurse. We have helped her apply for a visa to come here because every day she lives in fear of violence. Now she has reason to fear that our country won’t accept her. Please don’t let our country be such a place.

I am saddened to live in such a good nation where lies and racism are endangering people who have come here looking for a better, safer life. So please stand up for those who have been mistreated by unjust people.

Please, dear God, forgive me and us for the attitudes that have driven our nation to such a divide.

Ways to help: 

  1. Contact your state representatives on behalf of the Haitian people.
  2. Contact churches in Springfield to show your support.
  3. Fly a Haitian flag at your house
  4. Pray for God’s peace in our country
  5. Contact local churches near you that support Haiti missions.
  6. Send this blog to others
  7. Express your support through comments on the blog
  8. Yes, support better immigration policies
  9. Go online to look for ways to help Haitian immigrants 
  10. Read comments from Ohio governor https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gop-gov-dewine-defends-haitian-immigrants-springfield-work/story?id=113690058
  11. Get to know Haitian neighbors

KEEP YOUR FORK (A story of hope)

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There was a young woman who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and been given three months to live. As she was getting her things in order, she contacted her pastor and had him come to her house to discuss certain aspects of her final wishes.

She told him which songs she wanted sung at the service, which scriptures she would like read, and which outfit she wanted to be buried in. When everything was in order and the pastor was preparing to leave, the woman suddenly remembered something very important to her.

“There’s one more thing,” she said excitedly.

“What’s that?” came the pastor’s reply.

“This is very important,” the young woman continued. “I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand.”

The pastor stood looking at the young woman, not knowing quite what to say.

“That surprises you, doesn’t it?” the young woman asked.

“Well, to be honest, I’m puzzled by the request,” said the pastor.

The young woman explained. “My grandmother once told me this story, and from that time on, I have always tried to pass along its message to those I love and those who need encouragement. In all my years of attending socials and dinners, I always remember that when the dishes of the main course were being cleared, someone would inevitably lean over and say, ‘Keep your fork.’ It was my favorite part because I knew that something better was coming…like velvety chocolate cake or deep-dish apple pie. Something wonderful, and with substance!”

So, I just want people to see me there in that casket with a fork in my hand and I want them to wonder “What’s with the fork?” Then I want you to tell them: “Keep your fork…the best is yet to come.”

The pastor’s eyes welled up with tears of joy as he hugged the young woman goodbye. He knew this would be one of the last times he would see her before her death. But he also knew that the young woman had a better grasp of heaven than he did. She had a better grasp of what heaven would be like than many people twice her age, with twice as much experience and knowledge. She knew that something better was coming.

At the funeral, people were walking by the young woman’s casket, and they saw the cloak she was wearing and the fork placed in her right hand. Over and over, the pastor heard the question, “What’s with the fork?” And over and over he smiled.

During his message, the pastor told the people of the conversation he had with the young woman shortly before she died. He also told them about the fork and about what it symbolized to her. He told the people how he could not stop thinking about the fork and told them that they probably would not be able to stop thinking about it, either.

He was right. So the next time you reach down for your fork, let it remind you, ever so gently, that the best is yet to come.

©Copyright Ann Shorb, 2006

Turning Left Into Traffic

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Life is like trying to make a left turn into two-way traffic. I come to the stop sign and edge my way forward. Cars are coming from my left. I look right and it’s clear but by the time traffic clears to my left, there are cars coming from the right. I am looking both ways waiting for that moment when I can hit the gas and get into my lane. Behind me are two cars whose drivers seem to want me to move but I can’t.  Maybe if I edge forward a bit more. Now I’m too close to the traffic coming from my left. I back up, much to the chagrin of the driver at my rear. And now I’ve added some anger to my anxiety. I see why some folks will only make right turns.

At one point I stop my worrying and think, “I’m just going to sit here and wait until there is a wide-open moment when I won’t hurt myself or anybody else.” And I rest.

Life can be that way. Looking this way and that, worried, frantic, resentful, and so on until….until I decide to stop all my fussing and just ‘be’ still. An opportunity WILL come. I know it. 

Maybe it’s what Jesus meant when he said, ‘I am going to prepare a place for you.” So in the meantime, we don’t have to worry.

THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS

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Amidst all the rules, regulations, doctrines, and religions there is only ONE thing that matters. Paul calls our attention to it in his letter to the Galatians. Paul is writing to people who are coming to faith and in chapter 5:6 he writes THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS FAITH EXPRESSED IN LOVE. That’s it. The best definition of love I have encountered is ‘acting intentionally for the well-being of another’  That’s it. Any questions?

MY FAVORITE PRAYER

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THIS PRAYER OF THOMAS MERTON IS MY FAVORITE. IT TOUCHES MY HEART AND SPEAKS HONESTLY AND FAITHFULLY ABOUT DOING GOD’S WILL. PLEASE ENJOY AND PRAY.

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

“The Merton Prayer” from Thoughts in Solitude Copyright © 1956, 1958 by The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani. Used by permission of Farrar Straus Giroux.

Thomas Merton OCSO (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist, and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and given the name “Father Louis”.

GOD HAS FEELINGS TOO.

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The old dead theologians like Calvin said God was impassible, meaning God does not have emotions. ‘Impassibility is the notion that God does not suffer and cannot be acted upon or moved by any other source. This is because, as the Westminster Confession puts it, God is “a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions.”’- from Ligonier Ministries

But many many people disagree; even people in the Reformed Tradition disagree. 

We know that the essence of God, which is love, never changes. God’s love lasts forever.

When we look at Jesus we see the fulness of God. “For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ..” Colossians 1:19

Jesus shows us the Father. Jesus had feelings of sorrow, joy, and compassion. Jesus cried…at the tomb of Lazarus; over the city of Jerusalem. In Isaiah 53 it says that Jesus would take on our pain and that he was a man of sorrows.

And what Jesus experiences is experienced by the whole Trinity. We can’t separate them. The Bible even tells us that we can make the Holy Spirit sad. ‘And do not make the Holy Spirit sad. The Spirit is God’s proof that you belong to him. God gave you the Spirit to show that God will make you free when the final day comes’.-Ephesians 4:30 

Listen, we are children of God. Don’t parents have feelings for their children? Of course, they do. I can remember when my children were hurt in some kind of accident or were ill. I could feel the pain within me. I remember sending one of our sons to his room as a punishment saying, ‘This hurts me more than it hurts you.’ We are created in the image of God and if we can feel, we know that our God can feel. God even feels the pain of our sins. 

In the Prodigal Son parable, we see the joyous father hugging his son after the son returns from a wayward life. That’s God hugging us. No scolding, no judgment. Just love. In that same chapter, Jesus tells of the JOY in heaven when a soul is reconciled with God. 

There is no sorrow that is not known to our loving heavenly father. God lives in us and with us and feels everything. While God is not overwhelmed by our hurt, nevertheless God experiences it. 

As we get closer to Lent let us remember these words: “he (Jesus) began to be deeply distressed and troubled. ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch.’” Mark 14:33-34 

Whatever you may be going through God is going through it with you. And remember the joyful times. God is sharing those with you too. Blessings.

Jesus said, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.  Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” (Luke 6:43-45)

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Perhaps I am about to ask a rhetorical question but one worth considering. “How can an immoral person make moral decisions as the leader of this country?” 

NOT COMPLICATED OR MYSTERIOUS

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That’s right. God is not complicated or mysterious. When suffering occurs we often default to the mystery of God or say that God’s will is complicated. No.

Consider this. Jesus represents the essence of God and God’s purpose. Everything about God is disclosed in Jesus. All the fullness of God is in Jesus. Colossians 2:9.

Or as the MSG puts it, “Everything of God is expressed in Christ.”

If we see Jesus we see the Father. Jesus only does what he sees the Father doing. See John 5:19. God’s will for us is to flourish, to live abundantly and eternally. And all that is wrapped up in the sentence, ‘God is love’. 1John 4:16.

And just what is love that characterizes God and Jesus? Take a look at 1 Cor. 13. “4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. 8 Love never fails”. NIV

That’s not complicated. That God loves us so much that he gave his son as atonement for our sin is mysterious and to be accepted and understood by faith.

HERE’S WHAT’S COMPLICATED AND MYSTERIOUS.

The cosmos, free will, and the warfare of the powers of darkness.

And we know that Jesus fought against Satan. Jesus’ purpose was to defeat the powers of death. 

Colossians 1:13-15, ‘ For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.’

If you haven’t read the book of Job it makes for a fascinating understanding of the complicated world with which God has to work. 

For a clue as to how complicated this cosmos is, I share a lengthy quote from author, pastor, and theologian Greg Boyd. (worth the read)

“Science has demonstrated that the slightest variation in a sufficiently complex process at one point may cause remarkable variations in that process at another point. It’s called chaos theory. The flap of a butterfly wing in one part of the globe can be, under the right conditions, the deciding variable that brings about a hurricane in another part of the globe several months later. (This has been called “the butterfly effect.”) To exhaustively explain why a hurricane (or any weather pattern, for that matter) occurs when and where it does, we’d have to know every detail about the past history of the earth—including every flap of every butterfly wing. Of course, we can’t ever approximate this kind of knowledge, which is why weather forecasting will always involve a significant degree of guesswork.

By analogy, this insight may be applied to free decisions. Because love requires choice, humans and angels have the power to affect others for better or worse. Indeed, every decision we make affects other agents in some measure. Sometimes the short-term effects of our choices are apparent, as in the way the decisions of parents immediately affect their children or the way decisions of leaders immediately affect their subjects. The long-term effects of our decisions are not always obvious, however. They are like ripples created by a rock thrown into a pond. Ripples endure long after the initial splash, and they interact with other ripples (the consequences of other decisions) in ways we could never have anticipated. And in certain circumstances, they may have a “butterfly effect.” They may be the decisive variable that produces significant changes in the pond.

Each person influences history by using his or her morally responsible say-so, creating ripples that affect other agents. And, as the originators and ultimate explanations for their own decisions, individuals bear primary responsibility for the ripples they create. Yet each individual is also influenced by the whole. Decisions others have made affect their lives, and these people were themselves influenced by decisions others made. In this sense, every event is an interference pattern of converging ripples extending back to Adam, and each decision we make influences the overall interference pattern that affects subsequent individuals.

From this, it should be clear that to explain in any exhaustive sense why a particular event took place just the way it did, we would have to know the entire history of the universe. Had any agent, angelic or human, made a different decision, the world would be a slightly different—or perhaps significantly different—place. But we, of course, can never know more than an infinitesimally small fraction of these previous decisions, let alone why these agents chose the way they did. Add to this our massive ignorance of most natural events in history—which also create their own ripples—combined with our ignorance of foundational physical and spiritual laws of the cosmos, and we begin to see why we experience life as mostly ambiguous and highly arbitrary. We are the heirs to an incomprehensibly vast array of human, angelic, and natural ripples throughout history about which we know next to nothing but which nevertheless significantly affect our lives.

When all is said and done, the mystery of why any particular misfortune befalls one person rather than another is not different than the mystery of why any particular event happens the way it does. Every particular thing we think we understand in creation is engulfed in an infinite sea of mystery we can’t understand. The mystery of the particularity of evil is simply one manifestation of the mystery of every particular thing.”

—Adapted from Is God to Blame? pages 97-99

God is love, pure and simple. And, according to the Bible, God enlists our help to bring love and life to all people and this world. When trouble comes, keep looking to Jesus.

GOD APPOINTS LEADERS

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After the election of the last president, many evangelical leaders said that God put that man in the place of leadership, citing Romans 12. According to that same logic, the current president was also chosen by God to lead this nation. 

Some say that President Biden is too old to be president but if God chose him then age need not be the factor for God can do what he wants, give the ability to whom he wants, and even make a way should something go wrong with a president in office.

This brings me to a question for all of us. How should we pray concerning the leadership of our nation? For whom should people vote to be in agreement with the will of God?

I am not suggesting who I think should be the next leader of our nation. Rather I’m asking how best to conform to the will of God. 

While there are many issues to consider I will pray that our leader is one who is concerned for the people that Jesus was concerned with: the poor, the marginalized, the homeless, the unborn,  the aged,  the hungry, and those in need of justice. Just to name a few. 

Let’s see where the urgings of God lead, and what God’s will is for a nation that, if it follows Jesus, will be the light for the world. Maybe it’s a Republican, Democrat,  or Independent. 

Whoever wins will be God’s choice, according to some of my more evangelical colleagues.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.’

COVID AND ME

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Finally, I got the bug, the disease, the germ. It was a couple of days ago and it wasn’t pretty. But I’m better, thankfully. 

I don’t think God had anything to do with my getting Covid. It’s about a lot of complicated stuff in the world contributing to the original outbreak, and subsequent deaths, but none of that is God’s doing. God wants what’s best for us, not suffering or evil. God doesn’t do Covid or Cancer. Look at Jesus. Jesus did what the Father was doing… loving, forgiving, and giving health and wholeness. 

God does everything God can do through his influence, love, wisdom, and grace to effect change and bring about goodness. Last Sunday I was preaching about Romans 8:28 where Paul writes that God is working all things to the good with those who are called according to his purpose. That means that God is partnering with his creation to bring healing. 

Good doctors, good medicines, loving people, and wise scientists all are helping in this endeavor and in every situation of ill health, evil, and sufferings too numerous to name. There might be blame for Covid but none of it rests with God. 

Here’s what helped me on my path toward better health. First, my wife. I came home from an errand during which I had masked because I thought I had the flu and wanted to be kind and not infect others. But when I walked in the door of my house that day I started to cry. I felt so poorly. I sat down with Gigi and she prayed for me. She asked God to help me leave my burdens with God so as not to be weighed down and feel so down. She prayed for healing. And I felt the love. God’s love in her was now connecting with my soul and my spirit was lifted. And then I started hearing from my children and even one of my grandchildren called me to wish me well.

Then she went and got me Paxlovid from my good pharmacist. She forbade me to do any chores, and I heartily agreed. And then people from my church wrote saying they hurt with me and were praying for me. That’s love, the greatest power on earth. And it comes from God. And even if I didn’t feel better I am more than grateful for the love and partnering with God, church folks, my wife, and family. And I am thankful for advances in medicines and vaccines influenced by God’s grace in this world. 

One more thing. I have learned that when I hurt, God hurts with me. God is in me as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To them belongs the glory. Amen