For one thing I think it is the first time I have been aware of my children really understanding the extent of the disaster. Previous catastrophes haven’t affected them the way this one has – our 8-year old frequently talks about Haiti; without being prompted prayers for the Haitian people are offered up at mealtimes. It helps that Haiti already had a place in their consciousness. We have a Haitian friend in our church, and had (coincidentally?) begun supporting a work amongst Haitian orphans living in the Dominican Republic not long ago. It’s not that we had any particular concern for the Haitian people more than any other, but simply a belief in our Haitian friend who has taken up this cause, and wanting to support him. We agreed as a family that we would eat just rice for dinner on Mondays (when we remember), and give the money we save for this project.

So when the earthquake hit the children already had that connection. Not having TV they have been spared from a lot of the images – not that I am against children being exposed to the suffering of their fellow human beings per se. But images of suffering are so ubiquitous that it is easy to become blasé about them, and I haven’t noticed our children needing the reinforcement of pictures to understand the seriousness of what has happened. I can’t get over the extent of the damage though. It is so difficult to envisage an entire city leveled, and I keep imagining what it would be like to live there, and the overwhelming sense of not having any idea where to even begin putting life back together again.

And then you start thinking, why Haiti? I don’t mean in the sense “how could God let this happen”, because this is a question that doesn’t usually occur to me. I don’t blame God for natural disasters. I ask the question in the sense, why Haiti instead of, say, France? Are we more deserving than Haitians, that we live in such relative comfort, in secure homes, with reliable incomes? How do we get off scot free? And what if disaster did strike? Would we know what to do? Not just in terms of having enough tins of food stashed away to ride out a disaster, but would we have the emotional and psychological framework in place to be able to not only to get ourselves through it, but to be a beacon hope to those around us in the midst of it. If my house fell down, would I blame God? Would I shake my fist at him? Would I dissolve into a puddle of anxiety and hopelessness? Or would I have the necessary insight to realise that it’s only a house, and that life is more than the sum of my possessions, and get on with the job of helping my neighbour dig out his relatives?

If nothing else, the images of Port au Prince put many of my petty concerns in perspective, and is a great reminder of how ephemeral are our days.

Faith enables us to be at the same time realistic and hopeful. We can be realistic, knowing that no human project can eliminate the powers of darkness as they operate in human life. This realism delivers us from the utopian fanaticisms which have condemned millions of people to misery and death in the cause of an imagined future. But at the same time we can be hopeful, acting hopefully in apparently hopeless situations, not dreaming of an absolute perfection on this side of death, but doing resolutely that relative good which is possible now, doing it as an offering to the Lord who is able to take it and keep it for the perfect kingdom which is promised. In this sense [...] our actions in the public life of the world are acted prayers for the kingdom. They do not themselves lead directly to the kingdom. They are acted prayers for its coming and as such they act as signs of its reality and so enable others to act in hope.

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

It’s such a shame this guy isn’t better known. What I love here is the refusal to escape into a pessimism which sees the world “going to hell in a handcart”, which leads some to retreat into a kind of “lifeboat” Christianity which refuses to engage with the world other than trying to pull a few drowning people into the boat. But at the same time there is no room for living in denial, as if heaven was already here. Yes the world is profoundly sick, and yes at this point in time we can’t actually bring ultimate positive change through our actions. But, we can rest assured that our actions are not wasted. Change is coming! It is not our actions that will bring it about, but our acts do have an important prophetic role in pointing people toward the glorious reality that is coming. I also really like the idea of viewing our actions as a form of prayer. No room for passivity here.

Our house is full of teenagers again – well, pre-teens really. Maria is having a girls night to say goodbye to school friends before leaving for distant shores for a few months. We were encouraged that one of the Dads that didn’t know us at all called to find out who we are and wanted to meet us before deciding whether his daughter could come or not – we’re not so weird after all wanting to know the parents of the girls that invite her to their homes! They are still 12 after all, but there’s such pressure on kids to be independent.

He stayed for a drink. Interesting guy – a former social worker very familiar with the kinds of “hard cases” Heather meets at La Maison on Monday mornings. He defined himself as a “catho de gauche” – a left-wing Catholic, which he also defined as a humanist (super handlebar moustache!) He burnt out in his work with street people, and this meeting comes at an interesting point in a discussion Heather and I have been having about what motivates people to care for the unwanted, and to stick at it, when God isn’t in the picture. He spoke of several colleagues who had blown fuses doing this kind of work and given up. These people must be motivated by love – something that God has put there even though they don’t recognise it. But the missing ingredient is hope.

Bit tired to elaborate on this right now, but thinking a lot about the hope dimension in mission at the moment. Our faith is reflected in what we believe, our hope in what we do, and love holds the whole thing together. Better go and start my packing…

For ages Heather had noticed how many “SDF”s we have in our community (“SDF” is an acronym for “no fixed abode” in French), but we’d always struggled to find a practical way of getting involved with these people. That is, until we discovered the Maison bleue – “the Blue House”. We’ve found churches here to be fairly unengaged when it comes to working with the down and outs. It’s partly to do with the Church and State thing – since 1905 the institutional Church has been pushed to the periphery of social action as the State has taken more responsibility. It has got more and more complicated for religious organisations to be involved in this kind of thing, and I guess Christians have just put it in the too hard basket.

But there are a surprising number of secular people with a social conscience who are out there trying to make a difference, and we met some of them this last August at a Forum for clubs and associations in our town of Rezé. Heather has started volunteering there with a friend, Sarah, every Friday morning. The Maison bleue is like a little haven for homeless and street people, or people who have simply fallen on hard times. It’s open every morning. Breakfast is served, there are places to sit and chat, play cards, take a shower, and a group of volunteers who are there just to serve and offer a listening ear.

“We mustn’t ever expect these people to change” is something Heather has heard more than once from the other workers. Sure, the “clients” are angry, they are unwashed, they are lacking even the most basic social graces. Some of them even get quite violent: the Maison was closed for a week a while back after the violent outbursts of one of the patrons. But the goal is not to change these people, but just to be there for them.

How often do we see needs in our communities, but feel paralysed into inaction because it just seems too difficult to do anything about it? This paralysis blinds us to the fact that there are things already going on. We don’t necessarily need to be the people who start these projects; sure, if we aren’t the initiators then we can’t put a nice plaque on the door to show that the project is owned and run by this or that church or ministry. But are people really interested in what we do on Sunday mornings?

In a world without God, “we can’t expect change” is a very tragic, but very inevitable statement. But what happens when Holy Spirit-filled, Kingdom-oriented, Jesus-loving people step out of their religious buildings and come into places where real life is happening, where people are struggling with the hard realities of existence, longing for change, but seeing only impossibility?

Disciples know that change is possible, because they’ve seen it in their own lives.

It’s early days yet, but we’re very interested to see what might develop here.