On January 12, 2010 at approximately 5:00 p.m. a mega quake hit Haiti, and the tragedy began to unfold, video clip by ghastly video clip, picture by picture, it became horribly clear that we were bearing witness to a historical event in time. Too horrendous to imagine, stories of mass graves, heaped corpses, grief stricken family members, and the final toppling of an infrastructure that was already inadequate to say the least. Then amongst the horror, amazing rescues are heard of...3 days....5 days 1 week...2 weeks...people surviving against all odds...spending their hours praying to God. We have witnessed the Haitian people dancing and singing in the streets, worshipping God in theirt darkest hour! But tonight on Larry King Live, actor and activist Sean Penn starts off by saying "the people of Haiti have been bullied by God for many years"! I am immediately outraged!!! Sean is doing great work in Haiti, and I can see the sadness on his face as he recounts the desperation he is seeing...but....bullied by God? Incredibly, the Haitian People have suffered this disaster with grace and strength. Their circumstances in Haiti are as a direct result of human greed, not theirs but ours.... as it is in all third world countries. If we were doing, and had always been doing, what God calls us to do - loving each other - then these people would not have been living in desperate conditions; in unstable buildings; little food; little money.
God has not bullied the Haitian people, it is us....whenever we turn a blind eye to the poverty and suffering of our brothers and sisters in third world countries we are guilty....when getting a Tim's coffee is more important than feeding a child we are guilty...when we find any excuse we can NOT to invest $30.00 a month on someone's life we are guilty. If anyone deserves God's wrath, it is us...not them.
It is simply easier, and cheaper, to blame God.
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