Moments of Peace: Because He Lives

Yesterday I sat beside the ocean and reflected on the sweetness of that hour of peace.

Like most Saturdays, I’d begun the day with time on the roof to pray and read the Bible. Then it was shower, laundry, sweep and clean. Then there was breakfast, study, and departure for Creole lesson. For two hours I had Creole class, then returned to the house, deposed my belongings and commenced a project. In the mid afternoon we had our meal, then after washing dishes my housemate A and I set out for the beloved Weslyan center.

This compound owned by the John Weslyan church is large, boasting an impressive, well-maintained lawn with luscious growth of trees and floral bushes. There are several buildings and classes which meet outside. But the grounds are expansive and a quiet welcome sanctuary for students (and sometimes couples). It’s our sanctuary, too, a place Beverly and I were introduced to, and started venturing to ourselves to sit in tranquility under the palm, mango, and almond trees, beside the hibiscus bush, on the stone wall beloved by lizards, buffeted pleasantly be sea breezes and departing before the sun disappears over the mountain in its cascade of gold.

Yesterday A and I sat on the concrete ledge (which always makes Beverly nervous), dangling our feet over the narrow strip of sand between sea wall and tide. The view is of the mountainous coast, the island of Gonaves, and a perpetually glittering sea. Delightful breezes usually ruffle the waves and our hair, and we join our voices in song with the rustling palm fronds and percussive tide. Sometimes we read Scripture aloud. Sometimes we share our reflections, tell stories, share insight or seek advice. Sometimes we just sit and gaze.

Yesterday after we’d sung and read Scripture, we sat and gazed.

I gazed over the silver-spangled waves and reveled in the fresh salty breeze in my hair and sunshine on my face.

And I determined to remember that these moments of peace are all the sweeter because of the usual chaos of our lives.

In the same way, the laughter and silliness are more vibrant in the tragedy and hardship.

Sleep, showers, and food are all the better, more relished, refreshing, and savory because of the fatigue, copious sweat, and draining labor. We eat a limited diet every day, drink water constantly, and shower without heat. We’re perpetually sticky, and more often than not malodorous. We wake up scratching mosquito bites from those insidious pervasive insects that evade screens, walls, deet and citronella. We stand on concrete floors to teach in rooms without electricity, mats, or proper ventilation. We breathe charcoal and dust, trod through waste, and use haphazard internet with almost predictable electricity.

We don’t keep to schedules. We don’t stop.

We are blessed beyond measure.

We serve a God who knows just what we need before we say a word. He anticipates our every thought and has planned our every reprieve. So just before we collapse from fatigue, faint from hunger, crumble under the tragedy—He gives us repose. He gives us those moments of peace.

Peace on the roof at dawn when the rooster has finished crowing and the moon hovers on the treetops, watching stars abscond in furtive couples, and the sky herald in the sun with streaks of color.

Peace dangling feet off the ledge to the tide below, breathing salty air and counting boats on a blue-hued, gray-toned, green-tinted, silver-spangled ocean.

Peace closing eyes to bask in the melody of song, enveloped by worship of different tongues and nations, united in the harmony of a common Father.

Always we are singing.

Singing carries us through the chaos, the fatigue, the sweat, the tragedy, and the frustration.

Singing over the ocean is to join chorus with the wind and rustling branches, to blend with the waves and tumbling stones. Songs there admire the majesty of sea and mountain and cloud.

Singing on the roof at sunrise is to anticipate another day of challenges and victories, of joy and pain, of another chance to show God’s love to another needy soul. Songs there marvel at the prism of shifting color from teal to tangerine, salmon to mauve.

Singing on the roof at dusk is to give thanks for another day winding down, another set of goals established and obstacles overcome. Songs there welcome the burgeoning stars and anticipate a time of rest.

Singing in the salon during service, the household’s evening devotion, is to raise hymns of grateful praise. We give thanks, we marvel, we anticipate, we admire, and we cry out with all emotion. We blend our voices, beat out rhythms and hear the astounding echo of our harmony. The acoustics of the house are ideal for voices raised in song. Sound is magnified. Praise is amplified. The weak are made strong.

Today we sang a lot. At church this morning the majority of two hours was spent in song. In the afternoon there was singing and prayer over Doctor F, our housemate who passed out last night after his hospital shift and himself spent the night in a hospital bed. His sister, Madame R and Pastor had been at the hospital until midnight. Before departing for church at 6 AM we who’d been abed the night before heard this news. We gathered and prayed for F, and for Madame R, his older sister and delegated Manman. Ten minutes later they brought F home, face haggard and steps slow.

Through the afternoon there was singing of supplication and gratitude as he rested and the elections continued.

As I washed dishes after supper, I kept singing. The rest of the household in the vicinity were quiet. They were listening.

In the salon, Madame R was sitting while IL braided her hair.

As I commenced “Because He Lives,” she began to sing along.

Together, in English and Creole, we poured out our hearts in praise, grateful beyond expression for the sovereignty of our Savior.

Resting in the peace of that sovereignty.

Tomorrow is rife with unknowns.

There could be rioting in the streets. There could be violent manifestations over election results. There could be a hurricane forming to the southwest, following Matthew’s legacy of destruction.

There could be school with children not listening, arguing, having accidents, getting sick—there could be no school because of aforementioned rioting.

There could be moto accidents, road blocks, electricity, rain, extreme humidity, large spiders, feast or famine.

There could be a spectacular sunrise. There could be cool breezes.

Tomorrow may not come.

Only God knows that.

But I do know that He lives. An empty grave is there to prove our Savior lives.

No, I can’t tell you where that grave is exactly. I can’t lead you there, let you feel the ancient stone or trace the impression of his body where it laid temporarily.

However, I do know that such a place exists. And he is not there.

Just as he left that stony tomb, so we will leave this world. One day.

In the meantime, in the fatigue, the hunger, the sweat, the uncertainty, sickness, and tragedy, we can take heart. For before we are undone, before we are defeated by all this opposition, by the challenges large and small, God will aid us.

He will give us those moments of peace.

He will give us songs to sing.

He gives us rice and beans, peanut butter crackers, Bongu and Malta, when we need energy. But he sustains us through his Word.

Beneath the concrete on which our feet tire and knees groan, his foundation holds us up.

He rains down rejuvenating mercy with that unheated water, cleanses us with grace sweeter than the (brief) freedom from sweat.

And at the moments when we shake with loneliness, he sets a hand in ours, puts a smile to us, wraps arms around us. He surrounds us with tangible love, with valentines signed with his name. At our school alone we have 121 tangible valentines with hands to hold, joyous smiles, and loyal arms.

Through all of those blessings, all of those rejuvenations, we can sing. There are songs for every occasion.

I’m tired now.

I’m free of sweat but misted in deet.

I look forward to sleeping but I look forward to getting up, too.

I look forward to seeing Doctor F on his feet, venturing from his room to make silly, sassy comments, tease his sister, and giggle like a little boy.

I look forward to seeing our 121 valentines and their luminous smiles.

I look forward to hearing our voices resound in the kitchen, in the salon, along the balcony, off the rooftop, through the classroom where the teachers gather before school to pray and sing.

I look forward to recognizing God’s peace in the midst of the chaos.

Because he lives, I can face tomorrow.

Mwen Konnen L’Vivan

Bondye voye pitit li, rele l’ Jezi

Kite vini e padonen

Li rachte nou e li mete nou lib

Konye a la, li ak papa l’ ap ret tann nou

Kè

Mwen konnen li vivan

M’ap konte sou demen

Paske l’ vivan, enkyetid mwen ale

Paske m’ konnen, o m’ konnen

Li se tout lavi mwen

M’ap konte jou pou l’ vin cheche m

Paske l’ vivan

Sel espwa mwen se sou li selman

Paske l’ di mwen, l’ap vin chache m’

Eprev nan lavi sa p’ap fe m’ doute ditou

Bondye m’ nan gran e li vivan m’ape tann li

Because He Lives

God sent his son, they called him Jesus

He came to love, heal, and forgive

He lived and died to buy my pardon

An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives

Chorus

Because He lives I can face tomorrow

Because He lives, all fear is gone

Because I know, yes I know, he holds the future

And life is worth the living just because he lives

How sweet to hold a newborn baby

And feel the pride and joy he gives

But greater still the calm assurance

That child can face uncertain days because he lives

~“Because He Lives” Bill Gaither

You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.

~Psalm 139:1-4 NIV

“Do not be like them [unbelievers who pray publically and repeatedly], for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” ~Matthew 6:8 ESV

“You know just what we need before we say a word. You’re a good, good Father.”

~ “Good, Good Father” Chris Tomlin

No Pity Parties: The Gravity of Simple Truths

Jesus loves you.



You have value.

You are not useless.



God will make a way for you.

God can do anything.



Wait for Jesus.

He is Sovereign.



Every day there are reasons to be grateful.

Every day there is something good.

These are simple statements.

Simple truths.

But over the past two and a half months in Haiti, and particularly in these past two weeks, these simple truths have resounded in my soul and shielded me from despair.


The other night I came very close to a pity party.

I was tired. My body was sick and tired of being sick. The weather has been humid and draining. The once well-ventilated upstairs hallway is now blocked with a hastily constructed wall to separate our second grade classroom from the newly installed nursing school at the front of the second storey.

I was stressed. A teacher’s work is never done. We teach all day at school, in all ways, from hygiene to manners to academic subject matter. After the children leave we go home and commence preparations for the next day’s class. When you’re the resident English teacher you’re also tutor to whichever household members need English aid.

And in the personal part of my life, the part kept separate from school and from most of the household, a hoped for communication was left hanging.

God had spoken clearly. Now was the time to wait. But waiting is never easy. And the uncertainty of a thing is nearly always worse than the outcome.

So I was tired and stressed and disappointed and very nearly ready to throw the pity confetti and light the candles of woe.

But I had a text message to answer and determined not to spread the gloom.

A friend had asked how my day was.

My self-centered soul wanted to lament all the pathetic disappointments of the day.

But that was too pathetic.

So instead I typed I was okay and that school went well.

And it had. The children had been cooperative and eager to learn, as they usually are. They’re sponges yearning for the water of knowledge and praise.

Then I typed something I didn’t feel yet:

There are many things to be thankful for.

A minute later I typed one more word.

Always.

He replied “Amen.”

I’d not typed anything genius. Anything remotely original.

I’d just repeated a common statement, a statement determinedly positive. A statement profound in its simple truth.

It was provocative. To me.

Typing those words I didn’t yet believe was absurdly helpful.

Or perhaps beautifully helpful.

I didn’t need eloquent reassurances or long lists of blessings, descriptions of others’ misfortunes or comparisons of terrible hardship.

All I needed was reminding of the beautiful basic reality: there are many things to be thankful for. Always.

We are blessed. Amen.

I remembered that yes, I was sick with grippe, a cold with cough that strained my chest and shortened my breath. But I also had medicine. I had tea and vitamin packets. I had cough drops. I had water to drink.

I had a bed in which I had rested several hours the previous night and which was ready for me at any time.

I could expect electricity to power the fan at the foot of that bed to cool me all night and discourage mosquitoes, those few that permeated the room which had screened windows and a firmly closing door.

I had a shower and soap and a toilet, also behind a firmly closing door.

I had eaten two meals already that day and could look forward to more food. Food which I needn’t prepare, seek, or fight for.

I had come from a school full of children who loved me unconditionally. Who every day greeted me with smiles, hugs, and kisses, no matter how I greeted them in return or whether I could remember their names. They all knew mine.

In that same school were teachers who started every morning with kisses on the cheek, singing, prayer, and more simple truths of “Jesus loves you.”

I was in a safe house, secured by wall, gate, guard dogs, a well-respected and connected family—and God.

God.

That’s what all those blessings came back to.

God’s love.

God’s protection.

God’s perfect plan.

God’s sovereignty.

God’s unquenchable joy.

The pity party was dispersed before it began. The positivity police broke it up as my heart set toward Joy.

On Sunday I returned home from a weekend trip to Port au Prince. I was tired and sick, weary from coughing and woe. Of plans made, results hoped for, and a disappointing outcome.

My host mother, the indefatigable Madame R, a pastor’s wife and older sister who helped raise two younger brothers, school director and biological and adoptive mother to anpil timoun, many children, hugged me close.

She pulled me down to lean on her lap.
She told me again that simple, amazing, profound and crushing truth: Jesus loves you.

Then she pulled over a notebook page and drew a heart. Inside the heart she wrote “Jezi.” “This is your heart. Jesus is here,” she said, tracing the shape.
Jesus was the grand center.

In the upper right corner she traced a small section and wrote another name, an earthly name.

“This space is for him,” she said.
She put her finger on the space then flicked it away.
“So if Jesus takes him away,” she said, shaking her head and jutting out her lip, “it’s okay. You don’t have much problem.”
She shook me gently, still leaning on her lap, just a broken-hearted child.

“You can forget him. With Jesus. Understand?”

I nodded, and let the tears leak out of my eyes.

Simple truths are the hardest to accept.

“Everything with Jesus has to be intentional,” Beverly said last night as we lay on the roof, gazing up at star-strewn skies and thinking about the election results.

Above us, the clouds made parallel blockades across the skies. But between them were roads—routes of clarity through which we could see the twinkling stars, brilliant and pure. “He’s always speaking to us,” Beverly continued, “but we have to choose to listen.”

“And God will make a way,” I said, tracing those starry routes.

“Amen,” she agreed.

We spoke of Acts 17:22-31, when Paul addresses the Greeks and their shrines to the “Unknown God” (verse 23). Paul declares that since Creation God has been proclaiming Himself to us through His works, and He is never far from any of us.

We simply choose to acknowledge Him and follow, or continuously ignore and run the other way.

We agreed that in the United States, most people are continuously running the other way.

“But you,” Beverly said, our heads close together on the concrete, “you’re listening to Him.”

I’m trying.

Because although I’ve known for a long time that God is Joy, that there can be no fulfillment apart from Him, that every person and every beautiful thing in this world will disappoint us, I don’t often live that way.

I have not spent my life intentionally seeking Him. I’ve not spent all of my free moments considering Heaven, wondering how my actions in the moment are benefiting the Kingdom or making a good way for the future.

Far too often I’ve acted for the moment, for the rush of satisfaction, of adrenaline or pleasure. For the temporary, the short-lived and the rapidly forgotten, or long-regretted.

But more and more these days I find the Truth, and the desire for the lasting.

I don’t want to waste more time doing and then regretting.

I don’t want more guilt, more resentment, more disappointment, more turning away and running in the wrong direction.

I want the Joy, the love and the good memories, the reflections of contentment and Godly pride from a job well done, time well spent and love well given and returned.

I want that precious purity, untarnished by selfish desire and utterly clear of guilt.

And God is pleased to give us the desires of our heart. When our hearts desire things such as these.

When we yearn for Joy and purity and integrity, He is pleased to comply.

He gives us children who love us unconditionally. He gives us work to remind us of purpose, to fatigue us physically so we rest well, so we feel more fulfilled and useful, so we use the talents He set within us and hone skills He’s planned for us.

He paints the sky with colors of hope, trails the clouds in patterns of inspiration, tumbles waves upon the shore and cools us with fresh salt breezes.

God revels in showing His beautiful Creation, in surrounding us with breathtaking sights and heart-swelling love.

He gives us friends who need us, seek our embracing arms, our listening ears, our soothing voices, just as we need their arms to lean on, ears to hear, and voices to advise.


God reassures us constantly that we are loved. That we are precious in His sight.


Last week there was no school. All week.

Teachers always have work to do, whether class is in session or not.

However, after three days without school or internet, work was slim.

Then I didn’t feel well, strangely exhausted with great pressure in my head (the onset of that cold.)

The family went out and I stayed behind to rest.

In the evening after a day of impressive un-production I started to wash dishes in the kitchen. Whilst piling bowls I succeeded in dropping a bowl to the floor. It broke and someone then had to sweep up the pieces, me tiptoeing around the scattered fragments in my bare feet.


Eventually I got the dishes started, trying to do something remotely useful.

Our newly arrived housemate came down and joined me.

She noted my melancholy expression and asked if something was wrong. I told her about my latest failure of shattering a bowl.

“I’m just so utterly useless today,” I said, looking down at the suds.

“No you’re not,” she answered, rinsing the dishes I handed her.


That was all she said.

All she had to say.

In her words I heard Truth.

I heard affirmation of what Jesus tells me all day long: what He whispers, what He sings, what He shouts, what He proclaimed as He hung on the cross.

Jesus does not see me as useless. He doesn’t see me as a failure. He isn’t keeping track of all I haven’t done, of my lack of accomplishments.

He sees me as a work constantly in progress; as a beautiful Creation He’s proud to watch and help to flourish.


You’re not useless.

You have purpose. You are mine. You are beautiful.

You were designed especially for My plans.


I love you.

I will make a way for you.

Wait for me. Walk with me.

I want to help you.

These are the simple truths. The promises of God. The love letters of Jesus.

And you might dismiss them as obvious. Not noteworthy. Not remarkable or worth writing about.

However, I caution against dismissal of the simple. Of Truth. Life with God is simple. Walking with Jesus is the obvious best choice. 

No, it’s not easy. No, it’s not often attractive by the standards of the world around us.

But it is simple.

God is the only one who will never forsake or disappoint us. He is the only constant in a temporary, dying, chaotic world.

In the midst of your strife today, amid the protests, riots, turmoil outside and inside your soul, remember the simple truths.


Jesus loves you.

You have value.

You are not useless.


God will make a way for you.

God can do anything.

Wait for Jesus.

He is Sovereign.

Every day there are reasons to be grateful.

Every day there is something good.


“This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.
“He is God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth…He himself gives life and breath to everything and he satisfies every need…
“His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—although he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist.” ~ Acts 17:23-28 NLT

Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him and He will act.
He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.

~Psalm 37:4-6 ESV

Isaiah 42-49

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
~Matthew 11:28-30 ESV