The harvest is plentiful

 5 weeks. 

Five weeks ago I left Haiti having not the slightest indication as to what was about to unfold. 

In 9 years I’ve never been stateside for more than 3 weeks at a time. Now I’m stuck with all the emotions and side affects that defeated mental health gives. 

I felt completely blindsided. Had I have known, I never would have left my girls. I never would have packed that little bag and pulled out my passport. I never would have boarded that plane  and never would have said goodbye and told the girls I’d be back in a week. And I guess that’s why God sent me out before things got bad because He knew good and well it would have been an ugly fight trying to evacuate me after the fact. 

Five weeks of wondering if my girls are safe as I jump out of bed to check my phone in the wee early morning hours to make sure the gangs didn’t pay a visit in the night like they have before. 

Five weeks of trying to coordinate with the employees to scrounge to find and ration the supplies to feed so many mouths everyday. 

Five weeks of trying to find a way to pay the staff and filter water and make a simple phone call with limited and at moments nonexistent cell signal. 

Five weeks of hell on earth as Haiti is chewed up and spit back out by the gangs who rule the roads and wreck havoc on the innocent. 

And the sad thing is, majority of people here don’t even know what’s all happening just 90 minutes from Miami. It’s a hidden war barely if ever broadcasted on our tv. Many don’t know that children are being raped and refugees are being displaced and literal starvation is deaths doorstep and the sick are dying off without doctors and children can’t go to school and mamas are too malnourished to produce milk so babies are being fed watered down saltine crackers and I sit in beautiful America, land of the free trying to still my heart and I know that God is still good and this is where He placed me but I’ve lost the strength to hold back the tears that creep up and fall at the most inconvenient times. 

Day after day after day. 

The floodgates collapse with the waves of life. 

I’m mentally there but physically here and what I’ve seen while here and what I’m guilty of as well is that we are so blinded to the suffering in the world. We’re in our little bubble safe and secure having no idea what’s happening right down the road. Quite frankly, out of sight out of mind.  

The harvest is plentiful…. but we just don’t care.  The workers are few. It’s written in Matthew 9. Like sheep without a shepherd we go about our business trying to filter the best selfie and wear the most showy outfit to attract all the wrong attention and we try to fake it until we make it to reach the mountaintop of fame and beauty and riches and value and attention and all the while our neighbors are dying a slow death and the Word tells us why “but the workers are few…”

Christ followers, don’t allow the clutter in this world blind you from the very reason why we walk on this earth. 

“For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

Matthew 7:14

Being in America for this long was never the plan. And I still don’t understand one bit of it. But God is still active through it all with a purpose and a plan that only he can see. That’s evident. He’s still looking for the sheep. Continuing on the mission of saving souls. Finding His faithful followers willing to work in the harvest and take the narrow path. The narrow path that heaps loads of pain and heartache into a broken heart but ultimately leads to a life eternal with The King himself. Nothing triumphs that. 

May you see the work of the Lord this week and may you reach a lending hand to the hurting. They need you. Someone to care. Someone to listen. Someone to help. Someone to advocate on their behalf. 

We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19

The harvest is plentiful.

Photo:Miami herald