Last year, around this time. I was fighting to believe in The God of the Bible, in the God of it all, and when I say fighting, man do I mean it. I remember in my Discipleship Training School (DTS) there was a day when I decided that I couldn’t believe it anymore, that all my striving had been a lie. That The God in the Scriptures was a monster, a nefarious and selfish judge on high. I wanted to leave Haiti and live my own life. That particular morning i had read the story of Jepthah in the Bible and, my heart couldn’t believe that God could condone Jepthah‘s decision to sacrifice his daughter. Anxiety and anger bubbled in me like magma, threatening to engulf me from the inside out. God was everything but a friend, everything but sacrificial, everything but Love. And that day in my frustrations and misunderstandings I wanted to run far away from this God and I initially skipped class that day because I was so confused that my insides threatens to reveal themselves. I tried to hide, but He fought to find me. And eventually we tromped through the horde of doubt and misinterpretations and found the truth. Jepthah misunderstood God, just as I had.
Jepthah was so surrounded by gods that wanted the worst from people so, he built his understanding of God on all these other deities people were worshiping. Jepthah thought God a pagan and so did I. God doesn’t want these human sacrifices. God doesn’t want our blood. He wants our little mischievous hands in His. Time and time again when I don’t understand the Bible, It rights itself. It truly is the perfect book, and if we fight to find what it really says, we will find God himself. A year later, I am so blessed to know so much and to have read so many stories of God’s insane grace and mercy, yet with so much more to learn and know. How many times does he forgive the Israelites when they’ve left his beautiful home to erosion and disrepair, when they’ve turned holy places to gallows? He always forgives when we humble ourselves to His loving embrace. How many times too have we thought this embrace a smothering? I urge you to believe that it’s not. Today, in my first staff men’s group consisting of 6 Haitians, 1 American Haitian (An American who’s had residency in Haiti for 7 years), and myself, a noobie, I had so much fun connecting dot after dot in this great Bible while focusing on John 2. What‘s crazy is almost all of the conversation was in Creole, and I kept up! Let me tell you it was and is hard to be so at home with this book, but even in this battle I am so in love.
below is a poem
It took patience and even now it takes maintenance
how am I to sustain such a love for this greatness
if my eyes were constantly clouded by these bloody shrouds I was bound in
twas a fight to free my eyes and see this sight
blood again but this a different kind
A God slain himself to show us our depravity and need for kindness
yes I was lame in this blindness
then forgiven all the same
its a fight to walk this way
but I have friends to help me slay
and lower me into the fray
with Heaven on my side
I consider it easy to give it all away
the next place i’m placing my mat is The Holy Home
for where else am I to go?