Bound by need

I just recently returned from a trip to Haiti. I was part of a team that helped to build a church in a small community in Jacmel. It was a really intense trip. I saw a lot of brokenness, both literal and figurative. The need in that country is so profoundly immense that without a paint brush or hammer in hand I would have felt so overwhelmingly helpless. But armed with some sort of sustainable task made facing that need a bit more manageable. Even still, my dirty hands and sweaty back did little to fill the hollow spot in my heart that seemed to grow each day and with each mound of rubble that I saw. There was just so much destruction. I just don't know how these people will move forward from this.

In reflecting from all that I've seen I've been thinking about human need. I didn't want to return from Haiti with only a lesson that would apply to my time there. I wanted to be able to take all that I had learned and realize that the lessons transcend a place or a moment. It transcends that because human need is every where. There is very visible and tangible need in Haiti. In fact every time we drove from our campus to go out into the city we passed one of the thousands of tent cities that had the words "we need help" spray painted on a sheet at the entrance of the camp. And of course they needed help, they were living in tents surrounded by rubble. This is human need that is right in front of my face. But the truth is we are all functioning members of a very needy body of people. The human race is wrecked, broken, needy. We all need help.

The culture shock in returning to the states seemed to be more intense then when I arrived in Haiti. As I look around I don't see rubble. No, I don't see rubble or signs that say "we need help" made from dirty sheets. But I still see human need. I just see a people hell bent on disguising their need; hiding it behind houses or clean clothes or make-up, mini-vans and perfect family photos. If we admit we need help, if we admit we are needy, then we admit we are week and that this whole idea of the self-sustained, American dream could just be a kind-of lie.

I fall into this. I don't want to admit that being 32 and single is hard sometimes and that there are days I just want to feel like I'm a part of something. If I admit that then I would have to count on others to bring me into their families and into their homes and that's uncomfortable because it gets messy and you have to worry about boundaries and what if they get sick of me and...

The truth is we are a needy people. We come to the cross broken. Each one of us. And we serve a God that became human and broke bread and shared wine with us and died and then lived. And when we admit that we need a space at that table it frees us up to save a seat for those around us; to admit that need and accept the grace and love given to us from Jesus gives us the will, the freedom and the grace to extend such lavish love on others, despite, or even because of their deep need. We save them a seat at the table because it's at that table that our needs are met. It's at that table that we are welcomed into a family whose head is a Savior that quite literally journeys through life with us, that quite literally shares his blood and his body with us because he so deeply loves us.

Today, all I see in my head is that worn sheet with the words "we need help" and I pray that I look for that sheet in the lives of those around me and I pray that I see it, even when it's hidden and that my life is a literal offering of that bread, that wine, a seat at the Lord's table. I'm not there, but it's not for lack of need around me.

Last night was my first night back to the Emmaus worship service where we share a meal with a lot of our friends that I've met through ENCM. There's something about sitting across the table and sharing a meal with all kinds of people from all walks of life that reminds me of how we run to the table of the Lord, needy and we sit and we share with each other from a source that never runs dry. Thanks be to God and to those willing to save me a seat at God's table.