Our gravitational pull is toward numb. It is just not possible to sustain gut-wrenching emotion. So when suffering outlasts our natural capacity for compassion, we need to intentionally remind ourselves. Feel it again.
It has been over a month since the earthquake. Conditions on the ground are worse, not better, in many cases. As time slips by, I have had my eyes open for a couple of tangible ways people can help. Here are two that are inspiring to me:
A Home in Haiti
This organization is meeting the immediate needs of homeless families by providing waterproof tents as shelter from the sun and the coming rainy season. The rainy season officially begins in 4 days. Many families have no shelter – or are trying to huddle under sheets held up by sticks. If you want to make a life-changing difference in somebody’s RIGHT NOW reality, buy a tent. Donate money. 200,000 tents are needed to erradicate homelessness in Haiti right now.
Click here to learn more and to help.
Help Haiti Live
A February 27th concert sponsored by Compassion International, streaming live, raising money and awareness of the brokeness and the need in Haiti. To learn more about this event, click here to visit the Help Haiti Live website. I have a part of my heart reserved for Compassion International. We sponsor a boy in Tanzania through Compassion. They have done so much good in Jesus’ name for the least and the marginalized and the small… it boggles the mind. I trust Compassion International – their track record is impeccable for fiscal responsibility and minimization of administrative costs. If you want to help in a long-term, bricks and mortar kind of way, give generously to this fundraising effort by Compassion.
As an artist I have been moved by the beautiful work and art of the designers, musicians, and technicians working in symbiosis to help us feel. Brad Ruggles design on the Help Haiti Live site is gorgeous. The music from Provident Label Group above gave me goosebumps. The video work is outstanding. But it isn’t about the art. It is about FEELING. Artists help the Church feel what is important. And feeling motivates action. At the end of the day, it is easiest to block out the suffering of people we will never meet, in a place we may never go. But Jesus love is global. And we are the Church. So we must love. And love without action can hardly be love at all.
“when the shock turns numb :: haiti now” by Joshua Skogerboe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
