two posts in one: plane and 4th day in haiti

Okay I am going to do a few posts in one because tonight I finally am able to use my laptop. Here is the one from the plane:

Day 1

On the flight going to Port au Prince. Thankful for the beautiful fact that I get to return to a place I love and a place the lord loves more. I have no idea why he would choose to draw me into HIS pursuit of this country and its people when I have very little to offer, but as he has done with everyone he is used, he takes the least likely and allows them to join  him in his work so that there is no doubt in people’s minds that the work is completely His. I read in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce a few minutes ago that there are only two kinds of people, those who say to God “Thy will be done” and those to whom God says THY will be done and the choice is ours.

Sweet lord, my prayer is that thy will and not mine be done in these two weeks.

I have been reading exodus which has been an unexpected way the lord has chosen to prepare my heart as I see the stubbornness of the people and see so much of myself in them, in their inability to trust God as he leads them through the wilderness, their sense that they were better off in the bonds of slavery that the groaned to God for him to take them out of.

I know their fear. Their lack of trust. I share those things. And just as my first trip earlier this year, it is hard to quiet the doubts in my mind. It is hard not to wonder how in the world I’m going to serve Go while I’m here. It is hard not to think about the people in my life that I can speak with, that I know, that I can share the gospel with in the way I live and wonder if I am taking an easier route by going to a country of gorgeous people who love the lord with deep passion whom I love but don’t really know and won’t be able to know in the course of two weeks. But who I am to say how the lord would like to work and what he is doing? I know only that his ways are not my ways, his thoughts not my thoughts. They are far better. My mom and I have been leaning on a text in Isaiah 30 that says whether you go to the right or the left you will hear a voice saying this is the way, walk in it. Discernment is hard. But the lord can work with us and frankly he is great enough to work in spite of us, and His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

 My prayer for now is simply, My Father, thy will be done. Whatever it is. Use me if it pleases you, but I know you have no need for me. Draw me close to you. Draw my family close to you because I hate being away from them. I love being with them. I wish they were on this flight with me. I pray for obedience to you this trip, Lord. I pray that you break my heart for what breaks yours and you grow my affection for Christ. I pray that as your ambassador I shine you well, and that being here equips me to shine you well this semester. I love you.             

And now I'll share a little bit about the last few days. I am tired, but it is the good kind of tired. The tiredness that comes with a good day. Weve been to Cappva (the tent city) three times now and it would be hard to overstate how deep my affection has grown for the community, the kids, and the adults. There are these little moments that make it so good-we taught them duck duck goose today and it was so wonderful to see the joy on the faces of the adults as the kids enjoyed it so much-they were laughing and yelling, running all over the place. My favorite moments are when three or four kids (or twelve but that gets a little stressful) get real close and sit on your lap and braid your hair and hold your hands. It teaches me so much about God because they are so good at simply loving and no one taught them that. It is their nature. Its just the way they are. The divine image of their creator shines so gloriously in their smiles and mannerisms and personalities. What a blessing to see. We have had really sweet time with kids in general and that has been a huge gift over the first part of our trip. I am learning the beauty of being present with people. I am learning the joy simply of living and not needing specific reasons or accomplishments to be joyful. I learned the haitian way of washing clothes today with one of the girls who lives on the compound. Her little brother and I have been playing soccer every afternoon (sweet of him to humor me). Being with this family is one of my favorite parts of this trip. Another is when I see someone from summer for the first time. We are both so excited. I've noticed everyone asks how my family is. I wish we did more of that in the communities I am a part of back home. It is such a good question to ask, and remarkable when they know nothing about and have never met my family and yet they care a lot about them because they care about me. I am with 4 really wonderful people, and it is such a huge blessing to be on this trip with them. One I met while we were both here in the summer, his wife, their niece and her friend which are close to my age. Coming alone in the summer, there was a lack of community in Christ that I belonged to and it has been a huge gift from the lord to be with them, pray with them, work through unexpected and new situations and experiences with them and be in Christ filled fellowship. I am convinced that we are called to travel together rather than alone. that we are unaware of the depth God has intended for Christian community. It is a way He loves us well. So all is well here. God is faithful, work for the lord is plentiful but rest is as well. I have been forced into rest I would never have chosen, learning how often I use work as an escape and a distractor rather than as a way to glorify the lord. I am praying for openness and for God to continue to use us in his handiwork which alone will last.                                                              

day 2 in Haiti

Back in Haiti. It is a gift to return to a place that I love and that has done so much for me. It is my second morning here, I hope to write often to share what is happening. We spent yesterday in Cappva which is a tent city, where 500 families live in tents. One of the smaller tent cities. They have been there since the earthquake and have nowhere else to go. They could be evicted any day.
There is an overwhelming sense that coming to Haiti for 12 days will do little for the situation. Undoubtebly, we will accomplish very little in many senses of accomplishment. However, we are very lucky to come here as followers of the Lord and he is doing much in Haiti. In hearts, in leaders, in life changing. And he has much to do in our own hearts while we are here. And still I feel poverty while I am here. Not the poverty of the haitians, I would never claim that I could feel that, but my own. My inability to do much. My inability to speak to them. My inability to make a plan, to make decisions, because I can't just jump in my car and drive where I want to or see who I want to. Nothingis about me here. And I know that it is very good for me. To be in a place where I can relearn the gospel and relearn that the Lord loves me because of his infinte goodness and mercy and the work done on the cross, not because I am a good servant. I must be thankful for what he gives me. Yesterday he shared with beautiful children of his whose homes are in Cappva. He shared with me one little ounce of His love for them and I was nearly overwhelmed. By their smiles and their hands and their eyes. That have joy abounding in them. And I wonder where in the world this joy is coming from. And I do not know. I do not know where they find such gorgeous joy when I, who have been given so much, are so often brought down by fear and stress and worry about things that are so so small. So insignificant. And I have been able to see the work of the Haitains, who are so much more faithful to these people and their struggles then I am. My friend Max said to me yesterday that he was going to keep living in Cite Soleil, the worst slum in Haiti and one of the worst in the world, because he wanted to be with the people. He wanted to be among them. To serve them. To be a part of their community. And that is the way to love. And he said he would do that instead of making more money and living somewhere better because he is not staying here. Not here as in Haiti, but here as in on this earth. He knows that he is going somewhere that will be more beautiful and perfect than anyone could ever imagine and that for now he will live with this utmost discomfort. How humbling to see someone living like that. I know that the time that will be spent in this beautiful place will not be in vain because we did not come to fix problems, I know that there is so little in 12 days that I could do to help anyone. No, I am here to see the people that I love. To meet new people. To come back to kids that I have missed. Whose pictures are on my wall. To be with God. To trust him when its really hard to see what he is doing. To love him even if we feel that we do nothing. To know that he can work through our little acts of love with the kids and the families here. To know that he is preparing our hearts to speak clearly of Haiti in the U.S. and to keep this place in our hearts as it is in His.

happy christmas eve

Love of my life, make my heart one that adores you more. Take me into the word, written for me. Take me into your heart, broken for me. Take me into your life, lived for me. Stay very, very close. As close as Mary was to her son. I want that raw human closeness with you too God. Come again, Jesus. Come soon please. We miss you. Were waiting for you. We love you. Thank you for breezes and dinners and little sisters. Thank you for words and language. Thank you for touch and color and music. I want you so much today lord. I want to be pleasing to you. I know that you see me run and you beg me to come closer. To be like Moses, who spoke with you. I know there is holy ground and that I must stop long enough to take my shoes off and listen when I am in your presence and be watchful for the ways that you come to us today. I’m thankful that I am alive. That I am chosen. Chosen to be a part of your family . Lord I want to be all yours, everything in me to reflect you and to have no minute of my day that I hold on to. You know God, how deep my brokenness is. You know lord, the secret whisperings behind the praise that wonder if you are trustworthy, as I cannot escape the image of my first parents who also doubted your trustworthiness. Who thought that perhaps you were not really for them. You did not really love them. You didn’t know what was best for them. Some days are spent on the lake of Galilee, where you cooked some fish for your guys, where we can let the waves of joy and peace of knowing that you have done all there ever was to do wash over us and sit with you and eat with you. But if we share all with you, we share Gethsemane as well. I want no part in Gethsemane, as you know. I have no interest in sweating blood. In friends sleeping when I need them most. In pleading. In saying, not my will but yours. I love to say that when our wills are the same, but I am starting to see that there will be moments where our wills are different. And there is nothing in me and my ability to reason or think, no emotion, that leads me to think that your will is right. And it is then that I must remember your own words, “Will I do wrong Krystal? I will never do wrong.” And I must realize that I will do wrong. And I must say with my Savior, not my will but yours. No matter what it is.

Thy will be done.

I have to trust that your will was to harden the heart of pharaoh. I have to trust that your will was to harden the heart of Judas. I have to trust that your will was to offer your son, and if you would give him, there is no one, no person in my life, that I cannot give to you. You gave first. And we give back because we know that you are good. And that you love us.

That is all we know. There are things that are not promised in the word. There is no promise we can keep our family. There is no promise we will reap the fruit of the harvest. There is no promise that we will overcome our addictions. But there are things that are promised.

And your promises

Never

End.

We get to see these promises spoken by you.

I am the LORD and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and I will deliverer you from slavery to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people and I will be your God and you shall know that I am the LORD your God who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Issac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD.

And how did the people respond to such a deep and weighty promise? “They did not listen because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.”

The promises of the Lord come in the moments where we are sure if you, God, exist, you do not love us. They are audacious promises. Because you promise what our hearts are aching for, and we say how dare you speak of something so dear to us and promise us it when we see it slipping out of our grasp. How dare you even address those longings. I didn’t want you to see that longing, God. I didn’t want you to know it. Because I don’t think you can do it.

You go to mothers who are barren and old and promise them children.

You go to men who are ineloquent and uneducated and make them leaders.

You go to cities that are broken beyond repair and redeem them on the same ground where sin has been thriving and reigning for years and years.

You go to countries where your name has never been uttered and to people who have no desire to know you or your son or what he did and you make disciples and people give their lives to you and countries change.

You do what cannot be done so that we know that you are God. And that when the bonds of slavery are broken we know it is you that broke the shackles, not your people. I brought you out from the burdens you were under you told the Israelites while the burdens were still weighing them to the ground. 

God is good.

Today is the day of God is good. No matter what. Today is the day where we remember the words he said, Can the God of the World do wrong? No. lord you cannot do wrong. You will not. We can trust that you will always and only do right. We can trust that you Lord, you can make us obedient unto death, even death on a cross. We trust that we can come so close to You on that cross that you are kissing us. We know that the beams of love must be borne. You suffered not that we might not suffer but that our suffering may be like his.

I have some things to ask you for Jesus. To trust you more. To count every moment of life as one you can use to draw people to yourself. To love you deeply. To obey you, always. To live for you AND with you. Every single minute, not just for a bit of my day. That your spirit come and move and convict in the way that I cannot. That your spirit channels through me and dwells in me and that I embrace it and give it full reign over all that I do.

Thank you for life. For its fragility. For another day with those we love. For loving them more than we do. For loving us more than we do. For saying that no matter what I’m your child. That nothing can separate us. I love you.

Daily Surrender.

We live lives of daily surrender. Every day, I come to you again God and know that its all a lost cause without you. I come and I am aware that I did not love you well, nor did I die to myself for neighbor or my friends and I with hands and heart open I give myself to you. And immediately a voice says in my mind, what do you mean you give yourself to Him? You can’t do that. That’s just some cliché Christian phrase. And I am not afraid of the voice that tells me I can’t give myself to you because I know that what I can never do, you, God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, can do and will do and have done already.

You are who you are.

And so, some days, most days, all I can do is say the words “Take me, lord. Take my life. Take what I cannot give.” And I know that those words are just words but that you can create something more and that you speak things into being and I know that any meager, feeble surrender I offer was yours first anyways, it is your own heart that I offer back to you, and the words are those that you alone could give me the strength to even utter.

And I know that I have a high priest who pleads on my behalf before your throne and only because of him to I have the audacity to come to you and say, Please, God make me more like you. Please God, I have none of my own genorisity. I am short on strength. My intellect has disappointed me. My love is smaller than I thought. Please lord, make me bow more before your throne, please lord, make me love your sons and daughters more. Please lord, make me a steward you delight in, one that obeys you in the way I steward my money and my time and most of all the precious, glorious gospel that you have entrusted me with and made me an ambassador for.

Come again, Jesus, come into my heart this instance Spirit because I am nothing without you. All my hope is in you. All my life is yours. I know that my heart, will never rest until rests in you. I know that my soul will not rejoice until is praises you. I know my life will not bear fruit unless I abide in the Vine. And I know that I have no wisdom apart from your perfect Word. 

An intentional God

As I read through Genesis, I can't help but appreciate Gods deep intentionality and the awareness and respect his people have for his intentionality and his word. God knows what he is doing. I just read today about Rebekah, and the servant who was sent to find the woman God had appointed for Issac, and how seriously the servant considered Gods intention and Gods selection of the right woman. And my heart is grabbed by Rebekah herself, and that the Lord had made in her a heart to serve. Not a heart to serve certain people or serve in a certain context but a heart that met a stranger and quickly gave him a drink and then ran to the well to draw water for his camels. I've asked God many times his intentions for women. I see them in Rebekah. And I think of the girls that I get to work with and realize that there is hardly a thing more precious and worthwhile in the universe than being a part of their lives and into their becoming women of the Most High God. In their recognition of his love for them and where he is sending them and how he is using them for the kingdom. That the girls I know are eternal and where they spend eternity will be determined in the next 70 years of their lives and that God is allowing me to be a part of that and what a serious and beautiful thing that is.
There is no higher calling than to know Christ and to make disciples.
I finished my exams and am home in Virginia. It scares me to be home because I am afraid there is not enough work for me and therefore that I am purposeless. Which exposes idolatry, because my fear is not that God is not here. I know that he is. My fear is that work is not here. That purpose is not here. That I won't have enough to do.
I do a lot of work. And I know the lord made me to serve and to do work. But I don't look like the men and women in the bible who sought the lord. Who sabbathed every single week. Who waited on him. Who meditated on his word day and night.
I pray that I am more like them. I pray that I value Christ above all else. That anything that I do that his hand is not in will die, no matter what.
And I realize today, just what a gift the word is and how little I know about it. And that the fact that I have nothing scheduled today, that I can spend time knowing it more is a great and precious gift. And I see the way it changes my soul. And I see that the word and time, lots of time, with the lord, will make me set apart. Will make me holy.
Acts shows, the whole bible in fact shows, that the people of God are set apart. That they live in the world but they are set apart. And I realize that much is at stake in how set apart the people of God are. I can't count the conversations I have had where people's perceptions of Christ and of God were set by his people or those who claimed to be.
As I was driving home, I listened to a sermon by Tim Keller on knowing the Father and knowing Christ. The most important question, he said, and the question that must be answered before anything else can be addressed is the question of where you stand and what you believe about JEsus Christ. He himself asked, who do you say that I am?

Is he who he says he is?

Everything hangs in the balance of that question. Because Christianity is about Christ, but not in an intellectual way but in an intensely, uncomfortably personal way. God is a person. And our relationship with him, our knowing him deeply is the most important thing about us. If Christianity was a philosophy primarily, we could look at the merits of it and deal with it in an intellectual way, determining if it is logical. But its not. Relationships are not purely and entirely logical. In what I've seen in my 19 years, I'd say that there is very little that is logic based about them. You don't study relationships, you do them. You live them. Christianity is not primarily a therapy. So we can't start by saying, is this going to heal me? Is it going to make me happy? Will it satisfy my needs? Its not a doctrine, its a human being. Flesh and blood. Someone who ate and cried and laughed. Someone who bled and died.
And you are either with him or not with him- just like a marriage proposal, if you say yes it affects everything about your life. If you say no, that doesn't mean you hate the person or you don't want to be friends with them, but it does mean that you don't want to give the rest of your life to them, to live intimately with them, to love them. If Jesus is who he says he is, everything he said and did has significance and following him will be the most important thing.

the vine

Does my life please you God?

How rarely I ask. How little I am concerned with Him, his thoughts, his ways. The desire of the Lord is for our whole bodies to be filled with light. As full of light as a lamp and its rays. To be filled with the light of the lord. The light that is the Lord Himself. What a great gift to be filled with such a light. To possess such a warmth that the closer people get to us, his sons and daughters, the warmer they become.

I think of myself and how the opposite seems to be true. The closer people get, the more nervous and unsure I become, the more I worry that my following is not sufficient and that my love for the lord is feeble, that they may extinguish the flame.

If my body was full of light, or if I understood that my body is full of light, I could rest without worrying that I am not doing all that I am to do for God and using my time well enough, because I would be his light, and I could rest in the joy of the assurance that I am indeed used by God to bring light into the world he is so intentionally and faithfully redeeming.

Christ is willing to fill us with light daily, hourly. To pour his spirit into us, to lead us in the way of obedience, to teach us how to love.

I tend to confuse what determines what we do for the lord and what we do for ourselves, thinking that it is a matter of the things themselves instead of my heart. If my heart belongs to the lord, if he owns it and he rules in my soul and I am nothing more than a branch of the vine of Christ it will not matter what I am doing. Whether I am in class or starbucks or at hunter or in chesapeake or in haiti, it will not matter if I am with the poor or the rich, it will not matter if I am with believers or unbelievers, because it will be for the lord because I will be for the lord. Likewise, if I hold on to my heart, the great things that I do won't be great, they will be just as selfish as anything else.

If I allow myself to be only a branch, he will be able to do the work only he can do. Everywhere I am. He will not be limited by whether I am with college students or kids, friends or strangers. Nothing will stop him when my heart is all his.

In psalm 80 it says

 You brought a vine out of Egypt;
you drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground for it;
it took deep root and filled the land.
The mountains were covered with its shade,
the mighty cedars with its branches.

A vine. Hardly anything is as tender and fragile as a vine. Vines shouldn't cover mountains and mighty cedars. But this vine is christ, and we are the vine with him. And he will not leave us. He will drive out nations to plant us. He will clear ground for us. We will take root here and do much for him and his mountains and his cedars, for his world and his people. All of this is his. All of us are his.

So what is our role? If he is the vine dresser, if we are just branches, what must what we do. Yield. Yield to him. Trust him. Lean into our lord, and bear fruit. And be pruned so that we can bear more fruit. And know that his pruning, though painful, is sweet because he is the vinedresser and we are branches. And this pruning will only make us more dependent on him, it will never pull us from the vine that is christ. Our comfort is that Christ is the vine. He came down to be with us. To be pruned with us. To come to our status, so that we could come to his as son of the most high God.