Mining

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Beneath the rubble of people’s lives, buried in the cracks and crevices of their history and the frame of their creation, there is gold. How ever much the Haitians find themselves ravaged by their poverty, stricken by their circumstance, and wasted by the savagery of this land, this gleam, this radiance pierces the darkness. As I walked along the roadway to the mission house as I have done nightly this trip, from the dark a lone voice calls out ‘Pastor Doyle’. I say ‘How are you?’ in English and the reply bounces back, ‘I am fine’. I still don’t know who it was in the darkness, but 2000 miles from home, on a dusty, filthy street in the dark, two lives connected in spite of the cultural distance between us. I hear my kids names called out a lot on the street, especially my daughters. But this moment had significance for me. The truth I have poured my life into in these trips for the Kingdom came rebounding back, and like the dribbling of a ball, it felt good to feel the ball of truth caress my being as the exchange took place back and forth between us. The Sovereign is at work, change is happening, lives are being transformed, the gold is surfacing due to the mining of love. We see it everywhere, in the hearts of our orphans, in the church, on the streets, the tolling of the bell of the freedom of the heart that cannot be stricken from us, stolen from us, or purged from us by any kind of evil is ringing, and calling like our old dinner bell mom would ring, calling the wandering, the hungry, the lost children home. As the peeling of the bell we ring sounds across this city, and to all the places we carry the confident message of the One who must be heard, we see them coming. And what a joy it is to see! Exhaustion gnaws at the team, but it’s the good kind, the kind all know who would take this journey. Our trip draws ever closer to it’s end, and the heart starts to bleed. You pump so much into the days, and the rawness is almost like a carpet burn to the heart. You share everything you have, you give all you can, and the ragged edge of service grinds away at the core of your emotions. You feel the taxation tugging, it’s not bad, but its very real. We go to preach to the people this morning, all the week comes into focus for me, it’s time to speak, and in spite of the language barrier, I pray for the success of the gospel today. I will write more later, but this is what I woke up with on my mind and wanted to share quickly. Time to clean off the night sludge, and go! Blessings to all today.