A Sentiment

God knew what He was doing when He sent a gentle breeze and brought a lovely butterfly to set my heart at ease. The happiness of your friendship and the gentleness of your words have touched my life in special ways and now I feel assured. Thank you for your loyalty and for reading everyday. I only hope you find things to make a happy day.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Hooray For The Media

This is a picture of a large Church in shambles after the earthquake in Haiti. I found a picture of a typical Church...a small shacklike structure, but couldn't put it here because of copyright issues . This is a
highly religious country...they worship where they can. Now they worship in the streets.
Our Priest, Father Nnaso is in Nigeria right now. We had a visiting Priest last night...Father Simon, another Nigerian. He stood on our altar and talked about Haiti. He said that we would have special collections this weekend to help. The Red Cross, he said, has accepted donations amounting to 70 million dollars, so far. He related to us his feelings about the United States. His 2nd proudest day was the day he became a citizen of our country. He has no patience for people who criticize this land. In times of need...Americans are always the first to help. It's the way God would like us to be.

Here are my thoughts...The media is pretty much criticized for their relentless commenting on day to day this or that, but when it comes to a tragedy like this one...hooray for the media. They have been relentless on reporting the news, showing the pictures over and over, talking to their reporters "on the ground," and then showing the tragic pictures once again. We can hardly look at these pictures without feeling grief for someone else. The children's pictures wrench my heart. Seeing a Church in shambles makes me sad. The media is pretty much responsible for many of the contributions that have come in. The texting $10 to the Red Cross was brilliant. Contributing on the internet...so easy. If we had to write a check, put it in an envelope, wait for the mailman...it would take forever or maybe would be forgotten. Maybe we would think it a good idea and then just forget it as we got busy with our daily lives. When tragedies like the earthquake happen, they need instant help and through our modern day technology...this time they are getting it.

This from...By Manuel Roig-Franzia from WashingtonPost.com.


In the days since the earth pitched and rolled here, pulverizing shanties and mansions alike, the religious differences that sometimes separated Haitians have come crashing down.
Port-au-Prince has become a kind of multidenominational, open-air church. Tens of thousands live in the street together, scraping for food and water, sharing their misery and blending their spirituality.
The women singing together in Jeremy Square might never have worshiped side by side before the disaster, but now their voices harmonize and soar well past 2 in the morning. Lionelle Masse, a stringy woman with a deep, sad voice, lost a child in the quake. She sings next to Rosena Roche, a fiery-eyed Catholic whose husband is buried under tons of rubble.
"I still have faith in God," Roche says. "I want to give glory to God."
Regardless of their faith, countless Haitians have similar questions: Why was I spared? Are we being punished for our sins? Is this a test of faith? What happens in the afterlife?
‘Not the will of the Lord’Seekers stream into the parking lot of the ruined Sacre Coeur Catholic church, a 105-year-old brick gem that was turned into a grim, hollowed-out shell, its stunning stained-glass windows tossed to the ground in shards. There, the Catholics and the Protestants and others seek solace from Father Hans Alexander, a Haitian priest who took his decidedly un-Haitian first name from his German father. He doesn't ask them about their religion; he asks them about their pain.
"Catholics and Protestants and other religions are praying together now," Alexander says, as two tearful women slump over his thick, broad shoulders. "We are saying, 'We love Jesus; we don't care about religions. We just care about the Lord.' " He has tried to teach his followers this lesson for years but did not always succeed in changing the minds of parishioners who thought their religion was better or truer than others. The quake, he says, has done much to convince those he could not.
Balisha

2 comments:

cwa said...

Beautiful post. Thanks for sharing these stories. Blessings to you.

Tolentreasures said...

How true! I have heard it all many times first hand, there and in the DR also. How wonderful for them to be coming together to realize that we worship the same Lord and Saviour.

Cathy