You Can't Dig 200,000 Graves

I was reading an interview of a U.S. rescuer who was working with a search party in Haiti just after the 7.0 earthquake struck this poverty ridden nation.  He said "You can't dig 50,000 graves". Well here we are a week later and bodies have littered the streets...and many more than 50,000.  As the death toll has soared, I think of all the people who have lost a loved one and will never see them again. No goodbye, No funeral, No sweet words, No flowers....rather a mass grave in a vacant lot piled with 200 other bodies.

You can't dig 200,000 graves...And equally, you can't ignore 200,000 deaths, or you shouldn't. What has occurred in Haiti is a true tragedy. I don't really care what Pat Robertson has to say about it...What's happening is a tragedy and God's heart is broken too. These were His children. I feel that many American's think they are better than everyone else. Tragedy overseas feels unimportant, it is distant and the closest most American's will come to it is watching the six o'clock news tonight.  I feel differently on the subject. I weep at seeing pictures of bodies in the street. I rejoice, again weeping, as I watch them pull a child from the rubble 10 days after the earthquake. The country of Haiti didn't have room for more problems...more than 80% of the population was already below the poverty line.  But now here they are at their lowest of lows, and again they are kicked while they're down. So whose responsibility is it to help them get back up? 

I listen to the Big 98 with Jerry House every morning on the way to work. This week the phone lines were filled with calls of angry Americans stating "How could we give them 100 Million dollars when we have so much national debt?"...."This isn't  our problem!"....... "We are losing jobs left and right! We can't afford to help them!".....I literally became nauseous while listening to call after call from lazy, selfish, spoiled American's who have no agenda other than themselves.  Is our culture really this disgusting? I mean people are walking diseased streets, littered with dead bodies, with no food and water ... they have abruptly lost their families, their homes, their businesses, their everything and some Americans still feel that we should turn our eyes elsewhere. I'm ashamed for these people. I pity them because they are so blinded to how blessed the United States of America is. They have been spoon fed for so long that they don't really know that there is a world of hungry, cold, hurting people out there beyond the national borders.

Well the answer to the questions above is simple. WE ARE RESPONSIBLE. We are responsible for helping Haiti get back on their feet. We are responsible for helping them find homes for the hundreds of children orphaned by this earthquake. We are responsible for feeding and clothing and comforting them. We are all children of God. We are all brothers and sisters. We are all equal. And again, we ARE responsible.

"Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins" James 4:17

This week I read this verse and felt totally convicted of the times I have seen an opportunity to help and didn't. Whether it was inconvenience or vanity that held me from carrying out action - it doesn't really matter....it was wrong altogether. God doesn't instruct us to "Do good for others if its comfortable and fits nicely in our planner". The honest truth is that we are so blessed to be ABLE to help others...and this fact alone paints a perfect picture of why we are responsible for caring "for the least of these".  Close your eyes and imagine yourself in the middle of this tragedy, what if it were you?  It very easily could have been...but it wasn't....so get off your insanely blessed tush and get to work in whatever way you can to help out.

Matthew 25:40 

 ⁴⁰"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

photo above from Logan Abassi/AFP/Getty Images, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/17/haiti-earthquake-humanitarian-disaster