Moments from Haiti... They know too much death

We went to church on Sunday while we were there. I sat in the front row with the Manasseros and some other members of our team. When Pastor John McCool, a man who is as eccentric as Hait itself, started preaching from the second row, I had to turn around to see him. That gave me a chance to look at the people in the congregation. I watched them as they listened to him. I wondered what they were thinking. "How do they live out their faith here in Haiti? What are they hearing right now?"

The message was about God's goodness. Pastor John was arguing that although life is messy, God is good in the midst of all the messiness. The poignant moment for me came when John said, "I have had to inform parents that their children have committed suicide..." As he said this, two people caught my attention. The eyes of a young man in his twenties drifted off from Pastor John to another part of the room. He had gone somewhere else in his thoughts. I said to myself, "This young man has known death. Too much death." Directly behind him, a young woman began to weep. She cried off and on for most of the service.

People in Haiti know death. Too much death. Too much disease. Too much hunger. Too much tragedy. Maybe that is why when God fills them with his presence, they exude such joy. Where there is darkness, the light shines all the brighter.

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