So a second take on Chelsea King.   

I have been thinking about my prayers and the prayers of the thousands, most of which I assume would appear now to have gone for not.  Chelsea wasn't saved.  She isn't alive.  And most people are left with a feeling of, excuse the passion, "What the Hell is wrong with this world?"

It made me re-think something I wrote two years ago, when a similar thing happened, only that time it was cancer that did the killing.

Prayer changes everything and nothing - all at the same time.
I recently saw the familiar bumper sticker, “Prayer Changes Everything” and of course began to ponder if that is really true. In my opinion, often times prayer changes nothing at all because we are hoping, expecting, and searching for it to change something it was never designed to change – external circumstances. Can God change our circumstances? Sure. Does God change circumstances? Maybe. Is God’s focus on circumstances? Never.

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Last month I visited the International Justice Mission headquarters, not far from the Pentagon and just outside our nation’s capitol.  It was a beautiful day. The air was crisp and cool and the ground layered with the remnants of the recent snow storm.

Inside IJM, you’ll find a quant, but inspirational photo gallery. The walls are lined with telling photographs of beautiful people who are part of IJM’s work abroad. Each face on each photo has a story to tell of survival, of redemption and of justice at work.

An IJM church mobilizer, Lauren Johnson met me in the gallery. Upon meeting Lauren, it was clear that God has orchestrated her life’s path perfectly by placing her at IJM during this time. She was a terrific host. After a tour of the floor offices, Lauren and I sat down and we had a conversation about human trafficking.

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I just finished a book. It’s called The War of Art, which is not to be mistaken with Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Author Steven Pressfield is a former marine, so there is a sense of warring alluded in the book, but nothing that will compel you to dust off your Risk board game. And not that many people want to play Risk anyway.

Okay, back to my point. There’s a captivating line from the book that reads, “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” If you want me to fully comprehend the whole notion of Resistance, I would suggest you buy the book, but basically, Resistance is the thing that stops you from releasing your creative work.

During a snow day I had last week, I was faced with many options. Shovel, sled, sleep, schlep, surf the Internet and many other activities that may or may not start with the letter S. The one thing I found hardest to do was “silence” the day. My Resistance was the inability to just get quiet, soak in the moment for more than a moment and actually ask God, “What’s up?”

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Good morning.

Forgive me for the fog I'm in as I sit at my desk, looking out the window it faces, where snow is falling in huge flakes. Just last night I remarked to my dog, "Isn't it nice that you have access to the grass again?" and now, in a few hours or so, he will once again be forced to do his business in the areas that get shoveled.

"Why the fog," you ask? I did not sleep last night. I was wide awake, tossing and turning, staring at the clock, praying for sleep, counting backwards, doing breathing exercises, willing myself to sleep, to no avail. I even got up and took a TylenolPM around 3AM. Sometime around 5:30 or so I must have dozed off, because I was in a light, foggy sleep when my alarm went off at 7. Now, having read some scripture and had some coffee, I am feeling better, but foggy. In a few moments, I will have a quick shower, get dressed and head in to work in Manhattan.

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It’s easy to lose sight of an Infinite God. When God is everywhere, how can you find Him? If He already knows where you have been, what is there to tell Him?

In the midst of great tragedy, like the Haiti earthquake, it is easy to feel like God has abandoned us. It is easy to say, “Any prayer to God would be a waste of time.”

Our conversations with God can get lame— fast. “That thing you already know about, but have chosen not to fix, can you please fix it?” Lame, boring—I am not interested in that dialogue.

But what if our dialogue with God could be more? What if it meant more?

In the Psalms there is record after record of people screaming at God. That’s right, I said screaming. It’s in the Bible. And here’s the kicker, it’s not called “wrong.” Instead, it’s embraced and enforced—yelling at God was part of being an ancient Israelite.

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We’ve spent the better part of the last month making copies of our birth certificates, getting physicals, being interviewed by social workers, and installing more smoke alarms. We’ve filled out questionnaires about parenting, watched hours of training on trans-racial adoption, read books on attachment, given over our 3 years of tax forms, and prayed a lot. Finally, after many trips to the notary and the post office, I’m happy to report we have finally mailed off all our official adoption documents.

People keep asking me what our timeline is, when our son will be home. It’s absolutely maddening that I have to answer truthfully, “I don’t know.” The process is out of our hands and in the hands of 2 government bureaucracies. Every day when the mail truck arrives (at precisely 3:22pm) I bolt outside to get it, hoping there will be some receipt or communication that will advance us to the next step.

"Instead of waiting until crisis problems develop which result in panic praying for others, we need to trust God to protect them as we pray Spirit-led, thoughtful, caring prayers before the problems overwhelm them, and they are unable to cope. We need to engage in major battles, not just minor skirmishes, moving from surface praying to in-depth praying. We need to pray both defensively and offensively."  -Dr. Will Bruce

South Africa is currently preparing for what will no doubt be an exciting time in the life of soccer players and fans worldwide. The FIFA 2010 World Cup taking place in South Africa this summer is creating a number of jobs for locals as they prepare to host the thousands of tourists who be arriving.

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I received this video update from my friend Stuart who is on the ground in Haiti now. His team from a church in CT were there when the quake hit.

Stuart had this to share in an email only a few hours ago:

Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and prayers. Our team is still in Haiti, and we are doing fine. We have been working on various ways of getting out of the country. We are just taking it day by day. It has now been 4 nights since the quake and still most Haitians are sleeping on the streets, in open places, and huddled together. Most of them just have a sheet around them, or not even that. At 4am this morning I saw a man in shorts sleeping on the hard cement. They are sticking together though - it is vary rare to see people sleeping alone at night. We have continued to sleep outside as well, as the tremors are still rumbling quite powerfully. Please pray that the tremors would stop, that it would be safe enough for people to begin the long process of rebuilding there lives. Yesterday we were able to help find a number of Haitians whose relatives in the U.S. had heard no word from them. They are all alive. Today we will go out with different families in the community and visit their homes, pray with them, and help in any way we can. The smell in the air is getting worse as the morgues are overflowing. Though, being 40 miles outside Port-au-Prince, we are in a safe zone. Things sound to be getting pretty bad there, as bodies are lining the streets, and anger is rising as the days continue, the reality sinks in, and the scarcity of food and water makes its impact.

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It’s breaking news everywhere. Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, shook yesterday as a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the tiny island country. An earthquake of this size is devastating regardless of where it strikes. In poverty stricken Haiti, it is of the highest level of trauma. Haiti, comparative in size to the state of Maryland, lacks infrastructure and the means to enable recovery from such a force as this quake. Haiti needed help before the quake and Haiti needs help now.

In 2007, Haiti ranked 43^rd in the world for highest number of people living with HIV/AIDS. The risk of contracting a major infectious disease is high for Haitians due to unclean water. While 80% of Haitians identify themselves as Catholic and 16% as Protestant, nearly half of the 9 million island inhabitants practice voodoo.*

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1/15 UPDATE: Kristen and her daughter are back on US soil. They were evacuated in the middle of the night to a military base in New Jersey. They will be home by this evening. 

 

My sister-in-law, Kristen Howerton, was in Haiti with her infant daughter and soon to be adopted son when a 7.0 earthquake struck. You know her as the author of the Mama Manifesto blog here on Conversant Life. Kristen has not updated her Conversant column but, she has been able to post to her personal blog. You can click here to read her story so far.

She has been in contact with her husband, Mark, and all three are safe. The Livesays, the American missionaries she's with are also OK. The children at the orphanage made it out of the building safely. You can read updates from the Livesays and Kristen at http://www.livesayhaiti.blogspot.com/. They are updating as often as they possibly can in the midst of power outages and general chaos.