Haiti: When Tragedy Strikes

I went to bed two nights ago with breaking news of a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastating Haiti.

I woke up this morning to tragic reports of tens of thousands trapped, missing or dead in the aftermath of the quake.

Tragedy. What do we do about Haiti while living in Atlanta? How should we respond to a tragedy like this or any other of the dozens of tragedies that strike so often?

I believe the first response to tragedy is to pray. Pray for the victims of the quake, pray for their families, pray for rescue workers, pray for doctors, pray for those who will soon start the process of rebuilding. Pray without ceasing. The Bible is crystal clear that there is a power to prayer. How prayer “works” is sometimes a wonderful mystery and sometimes a frustrating enigma. Nevertheless we are called to devote ourselves to prayer (Colossians 4) and are promised that prayer is powerful (James 5). I hope that we are all praying for those in Haiti as well as praying for those in our family, our neighborhoods, our city and our world who are facing tragedies of their own.

The second response to tragedy is to act. For some of us that means being a shoulder to cry on. For others of us that means crying alongside the one who is experiencing tragedy. For some of us that means simply being a good listener. For others of us it means freeing up time and money to physically help those in the midst of the tragedy. For some it might mean giving up travel to a vacation destination to instead travel to the sight of a tragedy. For others it might mean giving up several evenings at home watching TV to instead spend several evenings physically serving a neighbor or a friend in need. As we submit our lives to God’s Spirit, he will lead each of us to respond differently. But you can be certain that he will lead us to act!

The third response to tragedy is to refuse to over-spiritualize or make judgments about why the tragedy occurred. In almost any tragedy there will be some who say tragedy struck because of a person’s or a nation’s sin. “God is punishing them,” they claim. A claim like this is not only irresponsible and self-righteous, it’s almost certainly false. God didn’t cause the Haiti quake. God didn’t cause your suffering. In fact he mourns alongside each of us. What caused the quake? Well, simply put, it was caused by the physics of plate tectonics. Immense plates at the surface of the Earth are in constant motion over a flow of rock beneath. The plates often rub together, pull part, collide or dive under one another. As this motion continues, the strain builds up to the point where the rock cannot withstand any more tension. Finally the rock breaks, and the two sides move. An earthquake is the shaking that radiates out from the breaking rock. That’s the truthful response to why the quake happened!

The fourth response, one that is best given only after an appropriate time has passed since the tragedy, is to acknowledge that, even though God didn’t cause the tragedy, he does desire to work through the tragedy to grow your faith and mine. God can bring good from the bad. In fact, God can bring good IN the bad. We live in a world that makes a fundamental distinction between good and bad, happy and sad, joy and sorrow. “They are always opposites. When you are happy, you can’t be sad,” we are told. And so we read articles and buy books and listen to experts that tell us how we can run from pain and towards happiness. But we are rarely told that joy can found by running in the same direction as pain. And thus death, illness, financial and relational pain all have to be overcome or ignored because they keep us from the joy for which we strive.

But that notion of happiness and joy is opposed to Jesus’ own vision. Jesus taught (and modeled) that true joy can be found amidst sorrow and that, in the words of Henri Nouwen, “the dance of life finds its beginnings in grief.” Jesus taught that “until a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it cannot bear fruit (John 12); that unless we lose our lives, we cannot find them (Matthew 10); that “a woman gives birth in pain, but soon forgets the suffering, overcome with the joy of a new life born into the world. (John 16:21).

Again Henri Nouwen:
“[Jesus] reveals a completely new way of living. It is the way in which pain can be embraced, not out of a desire to suffer, but in the knowledge that something new will be born in the pain…. The cross has become the most powerful symbol of this new vision. The cross is a symbol of death and of life, of suffering and of joy, of defeat and of victory.”

Jesus never desires or revels in pain, but he does show us that something new and good can emerge from the rubble.

And that leads to a fifth response to tragedy, which is to remember. Remember that we live in an imperfect world for which we were not made. We were made for eternity. We were made for a world of no sin, no tears and no dying. And one day we will experience that world for which we were made. Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart I have overcome the world (John 16).” Paul wrote in Romans 8:18-23:

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.”

And so we eagerly wait for that great day. And while we wait, we pray, we act, we refuse to judge, and we cling to our faith that beauty can arise amid the ashes.