The Date:                                  January 14, 2010; 7:50 a.m., Central Standard Time

The Place:                                 Standing in my bathroom; in Dallas, Texas

The Human Form:                      Female; dark skinned; early 30's; dancing brown eyes

Dear Girlfriends,

I was staring into my makeup mirror, applying my mascara, as I listened to the morning's edition of The Today Show. Tragedy had fallen on Haiti less than 48 hours earlier and reporters were interviewing the survivors first-hand to give us, here at home, some insight into the physical and emotional devastation that was playing out on a beautiful island in the Caribbean.   

I was processing the morning news as I regularly do - ears slightly tuned into the speakers in my bathroom, eyes focused on concealing imperfections reflecting in my makeup mirror, while my mind planned and strategized my day. In other words - I was only sort-of, kind-of listening. Until I heard a beautiful lilting voice softly say, "My baby is safe. Now I know God loves me."

I blinked. Then thought, 'What did she say?'  Wanting to ensure that I heard her correctly, I ran to the remote control, to replay the interview. The woman, a young mother, was beaming at the camera, holding her wee one in her arms. My Haitian angel rocked my world reminding me how misguided we all are when it comes to the mind and ways and the love of God.

Had her baby perished, would this devoted mother have believed that God despised her? That he was punishing her or worse - that he was completely apathetic? What if the little one had lost a limb? I wonder what she would have thought God felt towards her then? Or perhaps, what message of hate or punishment would she have believed God was sending to her child?

My dark-skinned angel could not have been more wrong about our God but she could not have been a better mouthpiece for most of us: When life is good: God loves us. When life is bad: He doesn't.

We may not be sitting in rubble. We may not be desperate for a bottle of water. We may not be suffering from broken bones or lacerations and our emotional state might be fine and well today as our children sit safely at their little desks at school. But individually, most of us are as confused spiritually as my Haitian sister. We put God in a box and blame him for nature's wrath and man's frailty and sin. We limited God to only what we know of our own conditional grace and mercy, failing to grasp that his love is beyond anything we can fathom; so often forgetting that he celebrates for us when we have an earthly win and grieves with us when our world comes undone.

Then, Jesus wept. John 11:35

My Haitian angel jolted my being as she reminded me how little we really know about God; how we so often forget that in good times and bad times, in joy and suffering, and times of abundance and scarcity God is with us. And how we forget that his love is not demonstrated by a happy ending on earth - but a better-ever-after in eternity.

Praying for the Haitian angels and all the angels working to save them,

Ellen

Posted by Ellen on January 20, 2010 4:44 PM  |  Category: An Angel Bombing