But If Not: Part II

“I would have pulled Joseph out. Out of that pit. Out of that prison. Out of that pain. And I would have cheated nations out of the one God would use to deliver them from famine.

"I would have pulled David out. Out of Saul’s spear-throwing presence. Out of the caves he hid away in. Out of the pain of rejection. And I would have cheated Israel out of a God-hearted king.

I would have pulled Esther out. Out of being snatched from her only family. Out of being placed in a position she never asked for. Out of the path of a vicious, power-hungry foe. And I would have cheated a people out of the woman God would use to save their very lives.

And I would have pulled Jesus off. Off of the cross. Off of the road that led to suffering and pain. Off of the path that would mean nakedness and beatings, nails and thorns. And I would have cheated the entire world out of a Savior. Out of salvation. Out of an eternity filled with no more suffering and no more pain.

And oh friend. I want to pull you out. I want to change your path. I want to stop your pain. But right now I know I would be wrong. I would be out of line. I would be cheating you and cheating the world out of so much good. Because God knows. He knows the good this pain will produce.

He knows the beauty this hard will grow. He’s watching over you and keeping you even in the midst of this. And He’s promising you that you can trust Him. Even when it all feels like more than you can bear.

So instead of trying to pull you out, I’m lifting you up. I’m kneeling before the Father and I’m asking Him to give you strength. To give you hope. I’m asking Him to protect you and to move you when the time is right. I’m asking Him to help you stay prayerful and discerning. I’m asking Him how I can best love you and be a help to you. And I’m believing He’s going to use your life in powerful and beautiful ways. Ways that will leave your heart grateful and humbly thankful for this road you’ve been on."

Kimberly D. Henderson, 2017 ©

Ms. Henderson noted with the reposting (2020) of her poem that it was the most shared piece of writing she had ever released to social media. My thanks to God for so inspiring her, and my thanks to Ms. Henderson for sharing her inspired words with us. Perhaps obviously, my response was to share what I would have done, who I would have saved. The following five names are all loved ones from Christian Academy of Petit Goave, Haiti, who died between June 2016 and October 2021. Four of them are children.

 I would have pulled Angelo out. Out of the basin where he drowned. And I would have robbed him of Heaven, of the love of Jesus rather than the unsympathetic thumb of his matant and years of restavek servitude. I would have robbed us of the increased awareness of time, the surge of urgency to love and work, to treasure and hold close each child God bestowed on us in each moment we had, for we couldn’t know if that would be the last.

 I would have healed Joozenaïka. Cured her of the fever and diarrhea drying out her frail body. Restored her to health and returned her whole and smiling to her joyous parents, their beautiful only child. And I would have robbed CAP of the medical fund begun in her honor, the collection dedicated to prevent any such tragedy from occurring again. I would have robbed partners of the awareness of this dire need to buffer for the easily treatable: burns, abrasions, and deadly dehydration.

 I would have healed Anaika. Gone back to her before her birth and ensured Mom was well-nourished, provided for mother and child so together they would grow strong, so the devasting long-lasting effects of malnutrition wouldn’t shorten this little girl’s future. Then I’d be sure her kidneys were cured, all systems developed in full-working order, and she’d live long and prosper. 

And I would have robbed CAP of progress. Of a whole new locale, complete with downstairs residence and extensive advantages including outdoor space for play and assembly, storage, full kitchen, added security and beauty. I would have robbed the seventh grade of a secondary school, the next level of their education. I would have robbed her family of their permanent residence, her father of his position as caretaker, her mother of a business place, her siblings of the advantages of growing up on the mission campus. I would have robbed us of this vision of God’s glorious working: His preparation of our needs, bringing beauty from ashes and so much good from the evil of death.

 I would have healed Madame Marjorie. Relieved her that day of her terrible headache that she might teach in peace. Seen her back to her stern, perseverant, God-loving self at once, ready to tease and hug a moment after seeming so fierce. Kept her with her family who needed her: working husband, five children, three yet under the age of ten. Kept her with us who needed her as our third-grade teacher. And I would have robbed her children of steadfast partnership, robbed her family of the generous aid of another family.

I would have robbed Madame Marie Nadie of the opportunity of entrance into CAP, of job security particular to God’s employment. I would have robbed her family of those advantages. I would have robbed us of Marie Nadie.

 I would have healed Adeline. Gone back to her birth and ensured the curse of asthma never entered her little body. Made her lungs strong, whole, hale and hearty enough to thrive in the chill mountain air, the damp cement walls, through the charcoal smoke and traffic fumes, through the ubiquitous dust. I would have kept Papa and Mama together, a healthy couple able to provide for their three children. I would have kept Adeline with us for years to come, watching her glow with health and the pride of doing well in lessons she was well enough to understand. And I would have robbed her of true perfect health and wholeness in Jesus’ arms. I would have robbed her of reunion with her Papa, Madame Marjorie, Anaika, Joozenaïka, Angelo, and Madame Missoule. I would have condemned her to years of suffering in this broken world.

And I know I would have robbed us of something, too. Of what I do not yet know.

But as I see the fruit, so painfully harvested, of Anaika’s and Joozenaïka’s deaths, I am sure that Adeline’s death was not only to her gain. Adeline is at rest now, beyond all the pain, fatigue, and fear of asthma, the constant struggle simply to breathe. She no longer needs our help. Even as I weep at the thought of not seeing her when I return to CAP, Haiti, for her mother’s grief, I thank God that Adeline isn’t suffering anymore.

 And I look forward to what God has in store. What beauty will God grow from these ashes?

What goodness is God working from the evil of Marjorie’s sickness and death, her husband’s widower-hood, her children’s motherlessness? How will God show us that all things, even the too-recent and too-close-together excruciating losses of Marjorie and Adeline, work together for the Good of us who love Him?

 Even as we toured what would become CAP’s new locale for the first time, a magnificent two-story house with rooms painted pleasant pastel colors, I choked on tears not merely for the grief of Anaika’s absence, but for the wonder at God’s working. Only a month after her death, God was walking us through this building, set in a compound with space for Recreation, for storage, for construction of a kitchen, a building so perfect for our needs we couldn’t have better listed a description. Of course, there were a hundred obstacles to moving CAP from our faithful building on the National Road, the only building the seven-year school had known. However, as God tumbled Jericho He brought down all of these.

The money to rent the building. The money to renovate, to build an outdoor toilet and an outdoor kitchen. A brand new, more powerful generator and a technician to hook it up. A vehicle and helping hands to move furniture. Fuel just enough to power the generator and the vehicles. A new director. A new third grade and fourth grade teacher and teachers’ assistants. A cistern, water tanks, a pump, and a water truck. Feed My Starving Children Manna Pack rice and a storage room too small to hold it all. Five extra days of cleaning and organizing with Beverly, Claudia, and I from the States, the impossible obstacle of our presence overcome by flights on little planes and long drives circumventing hot spots, buying gas on the side of the road as we passed gas stations chained closed.

Those five days of cleaning and organizing were supposed to be five days of school with children overrunning a campus not prepared for students: due to the ongoing horrors of kidnapping, threats, and protests, schools were closed and most people stayed home. We didn’t see the children, but we worked hard Monday to Friday and God used our team of many helping hands to great end. He also brought the Manna Pack rice and the water truck through by 5:00 Friday afternoon before darkness drove us home and national lockdown drove us prematurely out of the country.

 Now November is coming to a close and Haiti is still in turmoil, the U.S. Embassy still ranking Haiti at a Level 4 “Do Not Travel,” and there is yet no end in sight. Gangs outnumber and outgun the police. They seem to outwit and outmaneuver the few remaining legitimate government officials. Fuel prices are a steal at $11.00 per gallon. Nuns, priests, missionaries, pastors, nurses, and patients in ambulances have been shot at and killed on the road. School children have been injured in abduction attempts and campuses have been overtaken by gangs. More than a month has passed since seventeen missionaries were kidnapped, including five children. Children die from this deliberate violence and from lack as the fuel shortages and roadblocks deprive them of basic resources.

Anaika stayed at three hospitals that ran out of oxygen. Adeline died because the local hospital had none to give.

 We could easily despair, we could easily be angry, we could easily claim that we could do better.

However, remember Joseph, who suffered betrayal, slavery, and imprisonment in a foreign land. God used Joseph to save his entire family and to plant the Israelite people in a land where they would flourish.

Remember David, who suffered the insane jealousy and wrath of his king, the betrayal and death of his son, life on the run hiding in caves, the death and assault of a son and a daughter. God used David to deliver the Israelite people from the Philistines, used him to model us a man after God’s own heart, used him to write the Psalms.  

Remember Esther, who suffered the indignity of being groomed for a ruthless king, the fear of discovery, the burden of her people’s fate, and the risk of execution. God used Esther to save the Israelite people from genocide and show Himself to the Babylonian empire.

Remember Jesus, who suffered like no other when he was on the cross, the only truly good man to die.

(“Jesus suffered like no other when He was on the cross / Why do the good die? That only happened once” KB “Heart Song”). God used Jesus to save us all, once for all time. Jesus who was and still is the Perfect Plan. Jesus, who confounded Satan, defeated him forever when he rose again to life. God’s Plan went beyond Jesus’ ministry on Earth, beyond the cross, beyond death. The Plan saw the Expected End, the Good that was to follow.

 God didn’t pull Jesus off the cross. He didn’t spare him the pain. As He didn’t spare Esther, David, Joseph, Jeremiah, Job, Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego their pain and trials. As He didn’t spare Angelo, Joozenaïka, Anaika, Marjorie, or Adeline. Instead, God used Jesus on the cross to save everyone. He used these people in their pain to help others, to do greater good than they could have imagined, and to make them stronger.

Job was confident, even as he sat in those ashes, that God was refining him. “When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold,” he said (Job 23:10). If you read the book of Job to the end, you know this is true: after Job’s trials, the loss of everything, even the disease of his flesh, you know that God blesses him more abundantly. He has “twice as much as he had before,” even better behaved and more laudable children (Job 42:10-17). He lives a long and prosperous life: like gold.

 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego do not burn up in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. They come forth as gold, unsinged, without even smelling of the smoke. They lose nothing except their bonds. God does not save them from the fire; He saves them in the fire.

After the three have been cast into the inferno and the guards who passed them in have been consumed by the flames, Nebuchadnezzar sees figures moving within the furnace.

“Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?” he exclaims. “Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:24-25).

The king sees four men in the furnace. By his own admission, this king who has ordered the execution of three men for their faith in a deity in whom he does not believe, the fourth figure appears so glorious he compares him to the “Son of God.” God doesn’t save his servants from the furnace; He saves them in the furnace.

Astounded, King Nebuchadnezzar goes near the opening of the furnace and calls for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to come out. This time, when he addresses them, he calls them “servants of the Most High God” (Daniel 3:26). God’s three servants come out, unchanged save their bonds have vanished.

Pastor Raymond Woodward says, “There is freedom in the furnace of affliction when God is there with you. The only thing you stand to lose in that fire is the chains that bound you on the way in.”

God allows our affliction, our pain, but He does not ignore or enjoy it. He mourns and weeps with us, and He walks with us all the way. As God’s servants we are called to walk through the fire whether it burns us or not, knowing that God is walking through the fire with us, as He stood in the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego so long ago before the very eyes of King Nebuchadnezzar and his guards. We remember that even should God not spare us the pain of the fire, He will deliver us, one way or the other.

 I know God delivered Angelo. I know He delivered Joozenaïka, Anaika, Madame Marjorie, and dear Adeline. I know they are with Him in Heaven now, free of abuse, suffering, affliction, trial, trauma, and sickness for once and for all. I know that one day I will meet them again, in an ongoing celebration with all those who have gone before to Heaven, including those heroes Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Job, Jeremiah, Esther, David, and Joseph. I cannot wait to meet these heroes, to see my beloved children again. Most of all I cannot wait to meet Jesus face to face.

Meanwhile, I take heart knowing He is with me here and now.

Knowing that He has not forgotten His children at CAP. He has not forgotten the fifteen Christian Aid missionaries still in captivity. He has not forgotten any of the Haitians nor any of the residents suffering under the near-anarchy of the gangster-run country. He has not forgotten a single of His suffering persecuted children in Ethiopia, North Korea, Afghanistan, or Columbia. He holds each one close and is walking beside each one even as He somehow walks beside me.

I do not know what my Expected End is. I only know that already God has made me better than I was before. Already He has proven Himself over and over, stronger than depression, anxiety, loneliness, joint pain, migraines, allergies, fatigue, and political correctness. Already I see myself a little closer to gold.

 God’s Plan is more masterful than Satan’s. His chess playing and tapestry weaving long ago outwitted, outgunned, outmaneuvered, and out-moved Satan’s cheap cheating at checkers. Some of His Plan He’s revealed, with the new CAP location and secondary school for CAP’s seventh grade because of Anaika’s death. These glimpses of the masterpiece by the Grand Master make our beloveds’ passing more meaningly, if not exactly easier.

 My Friend, as Ms. Henderson said, I want to pull you out, I want to stop your pain, but I know that’s not the Way. God will grow beauty out of this hard, out of the ashes. He will work this for your good. God does have an Expected End for you, and He only has thoughts of peace toward you.

Maybe we won’t become legends like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, however, even if we don’t and even if we must burn in the furnace, let’s be strong and remember that when this is over, we will come forth as gold.

Our trials are allowed by God. Our trials our limited by God. Our trials cannot thwart God’s purpose. Our trials bring about God’s purpose.

 

Madame Marjorie with two of her children

Adeline

Joozenaika

Anaika

Angelo

Works Cited

    Henderson, Kimberly D. “When You Feel Painfully and Hopelessly Stuck in a Season You Don’t Want to Be In.” WordPress, 23 Sept. 2020, https://kdhenderson.wordpress.com/2020/09/23/when-you-feel-painfully-and-hopelessly-stuck-in-a-season-you-dont-want-to-be-in/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog. Accessed 21 Nov. 2021.

·        KB. “Heart Song.” Weight & Glory, Reach Records.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2daj3G0LVKY

·        King James Version. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

·        King, Martin Luther. “But If Not.” YouTube. 5 Nov. 1967, Atlanta, Ebenezer Baptist Church, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOjpaIO2seY. Accessed 21 Nov. 2021.

·        Lagazettedesydney. “A Very Actual Old French Poem: The Generous Gambler.” 1864, https://lagazettedesydney.wordpress.com/2015/05/02/a-very-actual-old-french-poem-the-generous-gambler/. Accessed 24 Nov. 2021.

·        MercyMe. “Even If.” Lifer, The Orchard Music, Nashville, Tennessee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6fA35Ved-Y

·        Woodward, Raymond. “But If Not.” YouTube. 1 Aug. 2021, Capital Community Church, Capital Community Church, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORmSm_VdkEg. Accessed 21 Nov. 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORmSm_VdkEg