April 2002

Easter

I woke up today after the best night’s sleep I’ve had in Haiti and cranked open the jalousie windows of our living room to let in the breeze that comes up the valley to Mombin Crochu in the mornings. Some church bells are ringing up in the village. It’s cool, sunny, tranquil. The kids that live nearby and normally are up and chattering by this time seem to be uncommonly reverent this day. It’s Easter. I sit for a few peaceful moments to read over the John version of the Easter lectionary in Creole and have an awareness of the Holy Spirit moving. What’s the message of the resurrection for the people of Haiti? And how do we fit into that, as recently-arrived, never-before missionaries trying ourselves to deal with loneliness and frustration and the uncertainty of a new life in this land?

The story of Easter is not a new item to the people among whom we live now. Most Haitians are steeped in Christianity from childhood on—much more so than kids in the U.S. They know the story. They know the facts, but like most of us, they need renewed deep comprehension of the message of Easter. They need the revisit of hope that Easter is—for their spirits and for their desperate lives. Again and again, and in a lot of different ways, they need to know with certainty that they, even in as humble circumstance as they live, have value in God’s sight and are loved by Him with such passion that He gave each one of them the Son.

Given today’s Haiti and its uncertainties about government, life, health, the future, and given the struggle for decent water and something more than a morsel to eat, and given today’s prayer for rain to nourish dried-out and rocky mountain terraces, and given the mourning over the death of a young mother, our brothers and sisters here need to know deeply of resurrection. They need to know that despite the predictions of the World Bank and World Health Organization, despite the doom and gloom of the U.S. State Department , despite the logical analysis that would lead one to conclude that there is no hope, in God and through Jesus Christ nothing is impossible, not even rising from death.

They need to know that the Body of Christ will not forsake them and that we who live with them—or who visit them, or minister to them, or pray for them—are the message of solidarity in Christ’s body. We are the stumbling and often stupid, yet living and breathing messengers sent by the human Body of Christ, His church. And our message is His love, His resurrection. Our message is Hope.

Can Covenant Hospital be the message, I ask myself? Frayed and broken in so many places—can we be the message of caring that needs to be providing vaccinations to children in villages no one has even numbered in these hills outside Mombin Crochu? Needs to be the soothing hand of Christ to fevered kids, the hand that guides and teaches mothers with too many skinny, malnourished youngsters, the hand that brings God’s healing to disease and injury and heartbreak in this often-forgotten comer of His world? Can we live up to the promise "I am with you always, and I will take care of you"? A quick glance up at the hospital—a quick glance within at our own human inadequacy. I know the short answer.

But it’s Easter. Jesus rose from the dead. These people know that. The impossible happened in Christ. Other impossibles can happen, too. In Christ—in His living Body on earth, His church—there is Hope. Covenant Hospital is here as a message of hope in the promises of God. May God help us here to be and send the message. May God help those in the Body of Christ to pray for us—as we Haitian Christians and Americans alike pray for them.

What joy—Christ is risen! Jezi leve vivant!