I haven't felt much like posting this week. Besides only sleeping a few hours every night, working on details of a Martin Luther King Day service on Monday, I've been thinking about that line from Casablanca, Rick telling Ilsa that, "the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."
So, although I've been thinking about a lot of things (including whether or not I have a mission in my life), the earthquake in Haiti has been overwhelming.
The ELCA website has resources for worship and donating.
The wonderful website pretty good lutherans has links to several tributes to Seminarian Ben Larson, who was killed in Haiti this week.
I was particularly moved by these powerful words.
Someone else said to me yesterday at church that there was an earthquake of similar magnitude recently somewhere else. There, about 80 people died.
"It's not the earthquake that killed people," she said. "It's poverty."
O God, where hearts are fearful and constricted, grant courage and hope. Where anxiety is infections and widening, grant peace and reassurance. Where impossibilities close every door and window, grant imagination and resistance. Where distrust twists our thinking, grant healing and illuminaiton. Where spirits are daunted and weakened, grant soaring wings and strengthened dreams. All these things we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.
-Prayer for time of conflict, crisis, disaster, from ELW
O God, open our hearts to feel the earth quake from the oppression of poverty, and free our hearts and our hands to work to heal those things that deal death and suffering. Amen.
3 comments:
I'm sort of compelled to watch the news. I have to turn it off sometimes. But I think it is important to be linked to the humanity in another place, another culture, another level of financial situations. It is all too easy to get into a "blame the victim" mind set. If people here could only realize that poor people almost always work harder than anybody they know here, they would be humbled. They can only work with what they have.
In another context one time a friend said to me, "I did the best with what I had at the time." That should be a life lesson for all of us. It is Grace when we find out later that we've made mistakes. It gives Hope in what we do now. It should make us less judgmental about the lives other people live, wherever they are.
poverty is part of it, density of population, especially the density of poor construction, is another piece of the tragedy. It's horrific.
I am thinking about you a lot these days.
We used to sponsor a young man in Haiti . . . I sponsored him for 14 years, from when he was 10 to when he was 24, but our link was broken when he outgrew the program. I've been finding it so hard to even think about Haiti because I will never know if Josue is still alive, and because he is just one among all the thousands affected.
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