Some Days, I Just Don’t Know. Haiti, Hollywood, High School Students and Hope

So, tonight I’m deeply aware of the devastation in Haiti as I watch the Hollywood elite wear their ribbons for Haiti as they complain that the rain is ruining their gowns at the Golden Globes but it seems to me that many of them are deeply aware of their good fortune in the light of this week’s headlines and I sure can’t judge because even though I’m not wearing haute couture and borrowed jewels, I am warm and I have food and I am not going without food so that someone in Haiti can eat.

And my husband, who has two rare diseases is taking care of me tonight because I have a cold, which feels like an upside-down triangle but it makes sense for now because he feels well enough to put dinner in the oven and I just want to go to sleep but I am sad for my friend whose husband died today and another whose grandson’s obituary is in the paper this morning and another one who is sitting vigil and praying as her mother approaches the end of her life, so even in my Nyquil haze I feel blessed but I mourn with those who mourn and bring them before the Lord.

And yet I laugh as I recall the energy and joy of my high school students in Sunday school today as they discussed the lessons they’ve learned from studying Genesis and groaned about being quizzed on that knowledge and eagerly thumbed through their Bibles and wrote answers about who begat whom and how Abraham’s impatience back in Mesopotamia caused the ripple that affects our gas prices today and they all seem to really get how sad it was for Leah to be married off in disguise to the guy who loved her sister and how amazing God is that He cared that she was unloved and gave her sons and a daughter and I remember at that moment thinking that life is good.

But then I hugged my friend who prayed her whole life to be rescued from an orphanage in Haiti and then God did rescue her and gave her a wonderful Christian husband who today is planning to head back to Haiti next week with a medical missions team and how he’s praying to return to Haiti long-term to build God’s kingdom but God delivered his wife from Haiti and now she is American so is God really going to send them back to Haiti? And I don’t want my friends to go because I need them and yet I want someone as wonderful as my friends to be at work in Haiti. And I wondered about life and God’s sovereign plan and thought how often I just don’t get it.

So, today, I just don’t know.

And I remember a Psalm I read this week, 131, that says, “My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore.”

And I thought that sometimes this Psalm annoys me because I often do concern myself with great matters and things too wonderful but right now, I get it. I feel pretty small standing up against the world and I’m glad I don’t have to figure it out and really, I do trust God even if my friends move to dark places and my husband has a terrible disease and Hollywood dresses in taffeta as someone is bulldozing dirt over a mass grave and something I said turns on a light for one teen-ager or maybe more than one and I think that tonight I won’t make any judgments about Haiti or Hollywood or high schoolers or even my own heart.

Tonight, I will be like a child quieted and I will put my hope in the Lord both now and forevermore and I will pray for those who mourn to be comforted and then I will go to sleep knowing that He never slumbers nor sleeps because what I am unable to do, He can do and is doing.

One of the movies nominated for a Golden Globe is titled “It’s Complicated” and I think, yes, it really is, isn’t it?