“On the fourteenth night we were still being driven across the Adriatic Sea, when about midnight the sailors sensed they were approaching land. They took soundings and found that the water was a hundred and twenty feet deep. A short time later they took soundings again and found it was ninety feet deep. Fearing that we would be dashed against the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for daylight. In an attempt to escape from the ship, the sailors let the lifeboat down into the sea, pretending they were going to lower some anchors from the bow. Then Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved.” So the soldiers cut the ropes that held the lifeboat and let it drift away.” Acts 27:27-32
A few weeks ago, Pastor Chuck Swindoll wrote a devotion about ‘unity’ and it’s message caused me to consider what believers in Haiti were going through now. In the above scripture from Acts, the Apostle Paul and the other shipmates were afraid they would be driven against the rocks and their ship would be broken to pieces. I can only imagine that our fellow believers in Haiti are fearing for the same results from their own form of disaster for their own country.
Paul and shipmates were experiencing life-threatening fears from the stormy sea and those living in Port-au-Prince (PAP) are hunkering down to avoid being hit by gang led gunfire being thrown at those who have come to end the chaos. And the roads in and out of PAP are blocked by the gangs so there is no way to escape. Just as Paul knew that staying together was the secret to their survival, the believers in Haiti are staying together in unity of prayer. They have remained faithful these past few years of gang warfare. They have kept praying, kept sending their children to Christian schools as long as it was safely possible. They keep clinging to Jesus.
The tendency in our fallen world these days is cut and run; drop the life boat and get the heck out of town and the country. We in the U.S. have seen it at our Southern Border; people running away from an angry sea into a promised better life. It’s our human nature; the grass always looks better on the other side of our neighbor’s fence; they too have weeds. My great-grandparents left their German homes for the promise of a better life. I don’t know what my direction would have been had I been with them in the late 1800’s. It would have been made after many family filled hours of prayers with Jesus and then waiting before they made a unified decision.
I do know that the parents and children from Christian Schools in Haiti with Trinity HOPE feeding programs are feeling the daily presence of God's people here in the U.S. surrounding them in prayers as the gang led chaos is taking away their freedom. They are in unity with us. Believers here and there are in unified prayers daily. With our God protecting and leading us, we are going to make it together. Unity. As we celebrate Memorial Day today, let us also remember the lives of those being sacrificed in Haiti for the freedom that awaits those remaining. Remember the sacrifice our Savior gave for each of us on this side of Paradise.
Heavenly Father, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.
May God be with you,
Jay