Bondye Beni Nou!

This is one of, if not, THE most common phrase in churches and among Christians here in Haiti.  It's also very common in the U.S. too...

God Bless You!

When I think about God's blessings I get overwhelmed.... overwhelmed with how much God blesses us, even when we don't even realize or acknowledge Him.

Today, at prayer meeting, we went around the room and each shared a praise, lifting up words of thanks to God for how He is at work in our lives...

I LOVE how uniquely God works.  He is a God that meets us where we are, knows our every fear, struggle, weakness, insecurity, problem, need...

He comes alongside of us and shows us that He is walking with us through these very things and that He will never leave us.

These are just SOME of the words that came up during our time of praise together:

faithfulness
help
family
mercy
patience
brokenness
answered prayers
wisdom
health
strength
friendship

Stop and take this in for a minute...  this is a reflection of how God was it work in the lives of a small group of people sitting in a living room in Haiti, in just one week!

Now think about how many people there are in the world, and have been in the world, over the course of history....

you get the idea...

God's blessings are vast, they are amazing, they are personal!


With all of that being said... I need to tell you something. Today was a ROUGH day.  I felt like I couldn't do anything right, and my responses to the difficulties of the day were not what I wished they would have been.

This afternoon, as I sat in prayer meeting, I was completely overwhelmed with emotion because of how God blesses me, despite me.  That even when I am not faithful, He is.  Even when I am not a reflection of Him, He STILL LOVES me.  It's unbelievably humbling.

The reality though is this...   when life gets tough and struggles come during our days...  God wants nothing more than for us to run to Him and lay it all down.  His desire is for us to cast all of our cares on Him and let them go.  ONLY He has the ability to free us from our burdens and He is truly the ONLY One that we can trust completely....

Today after we shared our praises we did a study in Psalm 2 and the words that jumped off the page to me were the closing words in verse 12....

"Blessed are all who take refuge in Him."

We are blessed when we allow Him to be our strength, our salvation.

The kids are currently memorizing one of the greatest passages of Scripture (in my opinion!), Psalm 91.  This chapter has come up OVER and OVER again in recent weeks.  I feel like God has given us this chapter to hold onto tightly... and more recently I can see why...

Life in Haiti is not easy... and God knew that.  He knew that we would need to be reminded of His faithfulness and His presence, of His protection and His peace.

The Psalmist writes in verses 1-4:

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  
I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust."
Surely He will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence. 
He will cover you with His feathers and under His wings you will find refuge; 
His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

May we always be aware of God's blessings... and know that when life gets hard, we are blessed when we find refuge in Him.

2Haiti4Him.