Help in Haiti

Bible says Christ is within us. Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me.” If you want to take anything literal in the Bible, take this literally: Christ lives within us. 2 Cor. 13:5, “Examine yourselves. Do you not know that Christ Jesus is really in you? If not, you have failed the test.”

One chief action of Jesus was the laying down of his life for the sake of others. He did it regularly, not just once at the very end of his life. He lived to help and heal people and to point to the joy and abundance of God’s real presence in life.


This has been a devastating week – to watch the horror of the earthquake in Haiti and how it is affecting the lives of people already struggling to survive. We in western KY know what struggles natural disasters can bring. 50 weeks ago we struggled through our own natural disaster in the ice storm of 2009. And we know the joy of receiving aid from people who lived in other parts of our synod. We knew we were not forgotten in our need.

We have the same opportunity to follow the law of love for our neighbor in the people of Haiti, to show them that there is a God and a people who care about them. There is an immediate way we can be Christ Jesus and his hands of healing to a people in great need. Cash today will bring them clean water, food, medicine for survival. Send cash with your prayers.

In the 10th century, there was a saint and mystic known as Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022) who wrote some words that point to the embodiment of Christ Jesus, created by God’s grace, in this force we call the body of Christ. It’s hymn 15 in his Hymns of Divine Love, and goes like this:

We awaken in Christ’s body,
As Christ awakens our bodies.
There I look down and my poor hand is Christ,
He enters my foot and is infinitely me.
I move my hand and wonderfully
My hand becomes Christ,
Becomes all of Him.
I move my foot and at once
He appears in a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous to you?
- Then open your heart to him,
And let yourself receive the one
Who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
We wake up inside Christ’s body
Where all our body all over,
Every most hidden part of it,
Is realized in joy as Him,
And He makes us utterly real.
And everything that is hurt, everything
That seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged,
Is in Him transformed.
And in Him, recognized as whole, as lovely,
And radiant in His light,
We awaken as the beloved
In every last part of our body.

I found this in Richard Rohr's book, Hidden Things: Scripture as Spirituality, St. : St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2008.
Be Christ’s hands in the world today.

Peace - PWM