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
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