experiences

The girl and I have been home from Haiti for one week...


One week?


I woke this morning drawn to the passage I shared one evening in Haiti, as thoughts of heading home were beginning to solidify for our team... We were off to the beach in the morning, the work we were doing to be continued by others... heading home in just 36 hours, yet I think to most of us it felt like we had surely just arrived...

"Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will REJOICE in the Lord; I will take JOY in the God of my salvation.

God, the Lord, is my STRENGTH; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places."
Habakkuk 3:17-19

I'm still impressed by, and quite possibly overwhelmed by, the gift that God has given us to live thankfully. God doesn't want us to have mountaintop experiences that fade away as we wander a valley on our way to heaven, but longs for us to be drawn to him, to live at a higher level of faith in THIS life - placing our feet on the stones he has laid before us on the walls of a cliff... facing each sunrise confidently with the wind hard in our face... tucked into a cave trusting the maker of the storms... That's what Habakkuk says, and that is what our friends in Haiti would say - in the midst of life, rejoice as they acknowledge that things are fleeting but GOD is not. So here we are, thousands of miles from this lesson, and I'm still drawn to it. The sun is rising in the trees and I have an office to spend my day in... What would Habakkuk say to me?

"Though the fig tree blossom plentifully, and fruit is heavy on the vines... the produce of the olive is bountiful and the fields are full of food... the sheepfold grows by the day and the stalls are packed with herds... I will REJOICE in the Lord; I will take JOY in the God of my salvation.

God, the Lord, is my STRENGTH; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places."

God is still the same, yesterday, today, and forever.