What made my day yesterday and today

I didn't blog last night because in the time we have available for blogging and such, a "God thing" happened. I was sitting on the back porch talking with Morgan Keach and David Jones about life and Haiti and God. About 10:00, Markenson, one of the orphanage graduates and and currently a Maison de Lumiere employee, walked by with his bedding to go sleep up on the roof. (The flat roof of the guest house is a very desireable place to sleep when it is so hot.) As soon as Markenson passed us, a little voice in my head said, "Pray for him." That little voice is a good one to follow.

A couple minutes later, David, Morgan, and I were on the roof with Markenson and his friend Robinson, the night security guard. With the cool evening breeze drifting over us, we gathered around Markenson, placing our hands on his back and praying quietly for him. Markenson aspires to be a pastor, but he lacks the means to go to Bible school. We found ourselves praying for his future, growing in confidence that he will indeed preach the gospel as he desires.

Not wanting Robinson to be left out, we asked if we could pray for him too. He replied, "Yes. Mesi" (thanks). He laid his shotgun on the ground in front of him. The barrel happened to be pointing at my feet, which made me a little uneasy. But again God spoke to us about Robinson as we prayed for him. God has dreams for us, and as we pray for people God often shares his dreams with us. In essence, we prayed that Robinson would live up to the potential God sees in him -- a future that can include being a security guard but is far beyond just being a security guard.

Those were the 15 minutes that made my day yesterday. Out of the blue, God invited us to participate in his work in the lives of Markenson and Robinson. Since we don't speak much Creole and they speak almost no English, prayer was the best way for us to bless them. You don't need to know the same language to build someone up through prayer.

Today I did normal weekday things -- walked the kids home from school, had a Bible study with orphanage leaders, played with the kids, and hung out with teammates. Tonight we got the added treat of celebrating the birthday of Erta, one of our very dear friends here at MDL. What a blast! Because Erta is a caretaker of the girls, they joined our team for the party. It was crazy. When they sing "happy birthday," you would think it is the last party before the world self-destructs.

At the party, I spent a few minutes talking with Cherley, one of the teenage girls who has become a precious friend. She wants to be a doctor someday. Aspirations like this are not all that common here, so I was very impressed. I asked her how she decided to become a doctor. "Because there are a lot of sick people in Haiti, and even if I can't help them all, I can at least help some of them." I replied, "You can bring them Jesus, and you can bring them medicine. You can help their souls and their bodies. What a doctor you will be!" Today Cherley made my day. I am deeply happy to see the kinds of things going on in her life -- she is first in her class in school, she is learning English at a tremendous pace, she has long been known for her servant's heart, and she has big plans for the future. Please pray a blessing for Cherley. That would make my day too.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Ten essential Dallas Willard quotes

Image
This week the church has lost a great saint and a shining light. Dallas Willard succumbed to cancer. As John Ortberg says in a wonderfully written tribute , Willard was brilliant, but "his heart and his life were better than his mind." I thought it would be appropriate to bring out ten quotes that do a pretty good job of getting at what Willard spent his life teaching and working on. 1. This quote states the central problem Willard spent his career working on: "My hope is to gain a fresh hearing for Jesus, especially among those who believe they already understand him. In his case, quite frankly, presumed familiarity has led to unfamiliarity, unfamiliarity has led to contempt, and contempt has led to profound ignorance." (opening paragraph of  The Divine  Conspiracy ) 2. The central problem, restated: "The governing assumption today, among professing Christians, is that we can be 'Christians' forever and never become disciples." ( The Gre...
Read more

Why I have no hope of going to heaven

Image
I have little hope of going to heaven. In fact, I don't even want to go to heaven. Why? Because if we mean by "heaven" the final destination for God's people, then heaven isn't somewhere we go at all. Heaven isn't up in the sky. Heaven is here. When we say "heaven," most people think it's the place you go when you die. You are with God and his people, and you live forever in eternal bliss. The trouble is, that's a half-truth. It's not the biblical hope. Imagine it like this. Say you are living in a house that has been your beloved home for a long time, but it has fallen into disrepair. The plumbing is bad, the roof leaks and the house is infested with termites. You have painted the walls, and you even bought new kitchen appliances. You love the house, but it needs extensive work. Now through the generosity of a rich relative, you suddenly come into an inheritance huge enough that you can have your beloved house completely remod...
Read more

Backpacking at the Dinkey Lakes

Image
I just returned from a backpacking trip in the high Sierras with my dad and oldest son. We packed in an area near Fresno called the Dinkey Lakes Wilderness. Yes, the lakes were dinky, as in small. Most natural alpine lakes are. But the place is really named for a small dog named Dinkey who protected his master by attacking a charging grizzly bear, giving the man time enough to grap a rifle and kill the bear. Dinkey lost his life for his act of heroism, but he was such an inspiration that an entire Sierra wilderness was named after him. Anyway, we visited eight lakes, each of them stunningly beautiful in its own right. The visit was everything we could have hoped. We shared adventure, exploring places we had never been. We fished -- successfully. We swam and goofed off. We enjoyed each other's company. There is nothing like three generations of a family getting large chunks of uninterrupted time together. The bonds between all three of us were strengthened, and for that we are deepl...
Read more

A test of your relationship with God

Do you have the kind of relationship with God that is like a married couple, including fights and spats? That’s the biblical, Jewish picture of a person who really knows God.  At a certain point in life when I was dealing with some major disappointments, I came to the conclusion that it would be better to yell all my frustrations at God than go through a separation and live apart from him. That’s why I love this quote from Lois Tverberg and her quote of Peter Kreeft so much. Trust me, you’ll want to read to the bottom of this discussion of Job.  “Job’s friends were making the mistake that Western Christians do today when we don’t have a Hebraic understanding of the ‘knowledge of God’—da’at Elohim. A Westerner opens the Bible and wants to prove God’s existence and construct a theology to explain God’s nature. We would call that ‘knowledge of God.’ But in Hebrew, to ‘know’ someone was to be familiar with him through experience and relationship, as a wife knows her husband.....
Read more

Connecting with God when it feels like nothing special is happening

Image
I read recently that Facebook has been known to lead to depression. This person just enjoyed a vacation to Hawaii. That person's kids are cuter and apparently don't act up like yours. And that friend over there just won another award. If you're feeling sassy about your life, you join in on the bragging parade. If that little gray cloud is hovering over you reminding you of how things just aren't turning out, Facebook makes it worse. Today I decided to raise my fist in protest by writing a post about the morning my walk with God was less like leaping forward and more like shuffling along. It's like getting on Facebook and posting, "Nothing special happened in my world this morning. You feel me?" This morning I got up and made tea like usual. I sat in my chair like usual. I began my prayer time, like usual, with these words: "You were [God’s] enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself...
Read more