What's Love got to do with it???

I AM SO TIRED OF HEARING PEOPLE TALK ABOUT HAITI...



ok so now that i have your attention, walk with me on this one

i normally try to avoid getting into "political issues" or "global content" or whatever you want to call it in my connection with the cyber world whether it be via facebook or twitter or this blog or whatever...there are several reasons...none of which i feel like sharig at the moment because i dont want to lose you on this point

i have obviously made an exception in the current moment, but it is clearly polar opposite from the "crowd"

here is my reasoning:

because talk is cheap


im sick of reading peoples status updates and tweets about how they are praying for haiti

the first reason is because for most people i dont feel like im going on a limb to say that this is basically the extent of their "helping the efforts"

they sit in their suv on their way to eat a lunch theyll pay 10 dollars for drinking a starbucks 4 dollar skinny latte and tweet "praying for haiti" on a 600 dollar iphone that they pay 100 dollars a month for...i think you get my point

the second reason is that if you didnt care about haiti before, why should you care now?

ok yea they had an earthquake that killed an untold number of people and please dont hear me saying that those deaths mean nothing, but think about it...how long has haiti been in poverty?

lets not even mention the billions of other people in the world that are in poverty too but are getting no attention because they didnt just have an earthquake

i understand that haiti needs help right now...but they couldve used help before but it didnt matter to anyone because there was no earhquake

as the body of Christ we are called to take care of the poor and destitute but the only time we seem to care about them is a one week mission trip every couple of years and when an hurricane or earthquake or some other natural disaster occurs..and then we care until the news tells us to stop caring by covering something else

when did that become acceptable?

if you read this blog with some regularity, youve seen me mention my host family before...

3 years ago on the day of the big peachtree road race i agreed to babysit while they went to run in it...what i didnt know is that they just went to get the tshirts...they started the race...went off to a sidestreet hopped on marta and then got back on the route about a tenth of a mile from the finish line so they could get their tshirts

now of course i dont really have a problem with that...they payed the entrance fee, they were in theory just getting what they paid for, and no harm no foul right? it isnt like they won a medal or something...

but what about the middle...

its easy to be at the start and finish...its easy to want to show up for those really important parts...when it "matters", but what about all of the road in between

what about 10 years ago when hatians had, yes more than they do now, but still not much by any standards

where were we then?

where will we be in 2 years when they still need help?

will we still be tweeting about how much we care about the hatians?


you might be saying well kate, there are people helping

and yea there are...i know there are people texting their 10 or 20 or 100 or whatever amount to the red cross and organizations like it and thats awesome

i know there are some people who will take spring break or something like it to go down and help deliver supplies and stuff...and thats great

but is that enough?
is that really covering our calling?

i dont know, i guess it depends on what your definition of enough is

what i do know is that we are in the middle of an economic crisis in this county but even at our "worst" we still have alot more than what haiti has or had or will have

even in the recession we still have our blackberrys and our wifi and our north face jackets tweeting about our sorrows for the hatians yet we are fine walking by homeless people on the street because they probably will just use the money for drugs and alcohol anyway and were fine spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on gifts for people we love at christmas even though a year from now neither party will be able to remember what exactly that gift was

and were still ok going and quarreling about petty things in our churches because being right is more important to us then being Love

haiti (and alot of other places) need us right now, but theyve needed us for a while, and they will continue to need us...whether its on the front page or not

they need our resources...they need our love...they need our help...but most importantly they need people telling them that Jesus loves them and cares about them and then showing them what that looks like with our actions...not contradicting what we say with our statuses

i hope today you will find a way to love on someone that isnt giving you anything back...love on them in a way that sacrifices...afterall that is how we were first Loved right?

have a wonderfully thought provoking wednesday