Looking for Life in Haiti - Pt. II

When our team met Willio Joseph, pastor and founder of Orphanage on the Rock, he kept using a phrase that caught my attention. "There are so many Haitians, just wandering around, looking for life."

Looking for life.

I'm nervous about this post because I still don't have a handle on what we saw an experienced in Ouanaminthe. How can you communicate the desperation in the face of man, who lunges at another with a broken bottle, hoping to steal his slaughtered cow? When you see something like that with your own eyes, 10 feet in front of you, it messes with you. What do you say? How do you comprehend walking day after day, in a town where naked children constantly follow you, because they've never seen a white face before? As I walked through the market, ankle deep in black dirt, holding my breath so I wouldn't breathe the wretched smell of rotten food and animal waste, I wondered, "Can humanity fall any farther?"

If we believe the scriptures. If we take to heart the words of Moses in Genesis 1. That every man, woman, and child, has been created in the image of God... than how does it come to this? How can man live like this? All these beautiful children are reaping the sin, the neglect, the rejection of human life.

Being human, having the right to exist, is the beauty of creation. God in his infinite mercy, created humanity with the utmost dignity and worth. And when that's rejected. When human life is cast aside as just a means for survival. Then leaving a 2 year old-HIV positive-little boy in the woods is normal. This is your end. Haiti's end. Look around the world. When humanity isn't seen as the culmination and ultimate wonder of God's creation...

You end up like Haiti.

One day long ago, a man walked the road along the lonely places. To anyone elses' horror, he was stopped by a man whose skin was falling off. The man asked if he could make him clean. Unlike every other the man approached on this sparse road, this man answered, "I am willing." In an instant, with the touch of his hand, the soul of a man who had long since forgotten the feeling of another, suddenly found life. He was given his worth and dignity back with a single touch.

For 3 1/2 days we lived alongside these beautiful children, in living conditions no one should have to endure. It often seemed hopeless. How can a people redeem itself? How will they get their dignity back? They're looking for it, will they find life?

And then for a moment, you see it.
You catch it in the eye of a 4 year old boy, who smiles at you with everything a mischievous, wild eyed boy should. You notice it stops you every time. And though he coughs through the night with TB, you dare to hope, if he makes it, maybe, maybe, this land will find life.

Perhaps the man who walked along the lonely places for all of us. The man whose touch gives worth and dignity to the worthless. The perfect man whose death brings hope to those "looking for life," will call the orphans of this island to his side, and for the children of Haiti, be the father to the fatherless.

Tonight, 17 Haitian orphans sleep with love as their pillow, and contentment in their hearts.

May our redemption song find those who are looking for life.

For us, and the forgotten.