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RSSWho Will Separate Us?
by The Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? -- Romans 8:35-36
Some disasters are sudden -- a tornado, a storm, a fire. And some disasters seem to go on and on, one terrible thing leading to another terrible thing, with a few more terrible things thrown on top of the pile. It would be hard to come up with country that has known more suffering than little Haiti, the poorest nation in our hemisphere.
Civil unrest makes cities and towns dangerous places indeed -- just since March, 450 people have been kidnapped for ransom, and hundreds have been killed in the street fighting that is a daily occurrence. Terrible poverty and wretched housing contribute to disease and malnutrition.
Even the natural beauty of the country has been destroyed: colonial overlords took most of the mahogany for their elegant dining sets, and the poor made off with the rest for firewood. There are hardly any trees left in Haiti.
Episcopal Relief and Development's presence in Haiti is ongoing, too, just like the horrors that make it necessary. Haiti is squarely in the path of several hurricanes each year. ERD need not journey there to assess the needs -- its economic and social development office is already there, helping the Diocese of Haiti manage a multi-pronged approach to the problems Haitians face every day.
The forces arrayed against hope in Haiti are many, and they are powerful. But the love of Christ is mightier than any of them. Those of us who have so much more of the world's goods -- and inherited, perhaps, a fine mahogany table and chairs -- we are the ones who do or do not show forth what Christ is to those who do not know. What we show them is up to us.
