The sadness in Haiti is overwhelming even seasoned reporters. One anchorman just said, "As the images continue to fill our screens here in the newsroom, I find myself starting to turn away. Because after a while, it's just more than..." and his voice drifted off.
But even amid the waves of pain and heartbreak, there is light. Various journalists have commented on it. Even in the bleakest of hours shortly after Haiti came crashing down, reporters were talking about the singing. Little groups of Haitians, on the street, in the park, singing praises to God and reaching out to Him in prayer. In what CNN called "an extraordinary display of hope," today hundreds of Haitians marched around the city park that is now their home, singing songs of joy. Strange joy. Striking joy, but not totally surprising joy.
I've been to Haiti. I've walked and talked with the people. And, in a sense, it's always dark in Haiti, even without a killer earthquake. So many live so close to dying all the time. Life is just trying to find enough food to live on that day. Home is a few pieces of tin barely held together. Hope is waiting in line for hours with scores of others because you heard this store might have one job available. Your day is walking, walking, walking - sometimes 30 or 40 miles, just to get some life necessity. And then there are those trenches, full of raw sewage flowing through them, used by some to wash their clothes or even for a drink of water.
But all through the land, you can still hear the joy - that strange joy. That joy the Haitians say has come from belonging to Jesus, the Savior who chose to enter this world in the squalor of a stable, to live homeless and poor, to suffer cruel injustice, and to die an agonizing death.
The hospitals, the schools that are there came, in many or most cases, with His ambassadors - the Christian missionaries who have made Haiti their home and the Haitians their people. And now, in Haiti's darkest hour, the validity of Haitians' faith in Jesus faces its most searing test. There, in the rubble and the death, the joy is still there. Not happiness, but joy. Happiness depends on what's happening. Joy is rooted in a faith that knows earth and its heartache is not all there is; that there is a Savior who loves you deeply and carries you when you have no more strength to walk. He risked it all, and He gave it all to rescue us from the death and hell of the sin that walls us off from our God and keeps us out of His heaven.
The Bible puts it this way: "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Hebrews 6:19). That's the anchor that holds my Haitian brothers and sisters even now as their world has fallen around them. Their world has collapsed, but not their faith. "They cried to the Lord in their trouble...He brought them out of darkness and the deepest gloom" (Psalm 107:13, 14). "Even in darkness, light dawns for the upright...his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord" (Psalm 112:7).
Listen to the singing, the strange joy rising above the rubble of Haiti, they're showing us light for our darkness.