Today as I sit down to write about joy, I cannot escape that quite its opposite has been surrounding us lately.   With the massive earthquake in Haiti just a few weeks behind us, I find myself unable to simply look for a more likely candidate to showcase joy.  Because if real joy isn’t based on circumstances, then devastation is just the place to look, isn’t it? 

A friend of mine, Rhett Smith, recently visited Haiti – doing some service there and blogging about his experiences.  I followed his blog and wanted to share some excerpts with you.  [To read more of Rhett’s blogs, go to rhettsmith.com]

Why?

Our second stop was in another church/hospital compound that was run by the pastor, his wife and lots of volunteer doctors and nurses. Again I found myself on the edge of the experience until we walked inside to take a tour of the hospital and talk with the patients. In the very back room we met a woman who was sitting on the edge of her bed recovering from her wounds after being buried for almost two days in all the rubble. We asked if she wanted to share her story. She told us about her house shaking, and how when the roof collapsed she was holding her twin baby boys (17 months old). Both boys died.  In her eyes was such hope and peace as she talked about calling out the name of Jesus for help.

We began to pray for her and her husband, all 10-15 of us Americans, along with other Haitians and Dominicans. We stood there, hands on them, praying about things that none of us could ever have understood. And then in the overwhelming grief, the husband began to rock back and forth, shake, and cry out, “Why Jesus, Why Jesus, Why Jesus, Why Jesus” — over and over and over again. I have been in lots of hospital rooms, and even spent 5 years in the hospital rooms of my mom as she was dying of breast cancer. I remember being next to her after she had died, consumed with my own grief. But in all my years I have never been witness to someone so overcome by grief. It’s the type of grief that you picture an Old Testament character experiencing after the loss of their entire family, wherein they strip off their clothes to cover themselves in sackcloth and ashes and sit down in their grief. I stood in silence, stunned, unable to offer forth any words. We all stood in silence.

Later that day, I stood on top of one house, watching a group of about ten-thousand Haitians worshipping anywhere they could in close proximity to the church. I almost expected some people to lower a friend through the roof of the church so that they could be healed. I saw a man standing in a tall tree, just hoping that he could get a glimpse of the prayer service.

Displaced God

One of the questions that has been going round and round in my mind is “How can these people who have suffered so greatly, worship and praise God in the midst of picking up the pieces? Because I’m not sure if I could do it. I’m not so sure that if such a tragedy came upon me that I would have even half of the hopeful spirit that the Haitians have displayed to us over and over again during our time here.

This spirit of hope and faith and love is not something that I saw on the news at night. It’s not a story you will read in the papers or online. While the rest of the mainstream media is talking about all of the destruction and mourning, they have failed to see the whole story. There has been no coverage of all the people pouring into churches by the thousands all over the city. Instead of a day of mourning, it has been days and days of hope and praise. A country in transition. In search of change.

How can the Haitians praise God when many of their lives have been destroyed, and they are deprived of basic needs like food, water, shelter, medical care and security?

I believe it’s because they, like us, worship a displaced God.

Immanuel.

God is with us.

God who took on flesh.

God who has experienced our pains.

Empty

At one service I was tapped on the shoulder and informed by a Haitian pastor that I would be giving the sermon that day.

It took me about a minute or so to gather myself on stage before I was able to bring forth the words that they had invited me to speak to them. And what’s a minute anyways when I had been asked to speak in the prior thirty seconds. That minute or so seemed uncomfortably long for my translator who was encouraging me to go on. If it was uncomfortable for him (as was the slow painful march to the front of the church) it felt both humiliating and freeing for me. And when I looked in the faces of the Haitians staring up at me, I knew we had connected on a much deeper and personal level than any of the words I could have spoken to them anyway.

In the quiet silence of the church, where only my sobbing could be heard, I was able to identify with their pain in a way that I didn’t think possible…and I believe they were thankful that I could mourn the loss of life with them…and then celebrate the living of life with them.           

Reading my friends blogs, I learned something about God.  God sees human pain and suffering, and Philippians 2 says that He “emptied Himself” and joined in it.  By becoming human, in the man Jesus, God emptied Himself and shared in the suffering of the world.  God responded much like my friend who went to Haiti, empty-handed, and just cried with the people. 

We hear the man crying in Haiti, “Why Jesus, why?!”  It is a fair question.  But we can also hear another cry of agony – a cry from the cross – Jesus screaming, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

God does not stop all pain and suffering, and I will never understand why.  But God does not abandon suffering.  He empties Himself and cries with us.  He has compassion… co – passion … feeling with us the pain we are feeling.

Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble.”  It is a given.  But countless times He also said, “I am with you.”   Matthew begins his gospel with the description of the Messiah, calling him Immanuel – which means “God with us.”  He ends his gospel with the promise, “I am with you always.”

Joy is not escaping trouble.  Joy is the deep-set contentment that comes with knowing that God is not watching from a distance.  He is with us.

So wherever you find yourself today - laughing, crying, or somewhere in between – know that God is with you, and you will have found joy.