Haiti: Making Sense of suffering?

A powerful aftershock today resulted in the final determination that the buildings of the HIS Home Orphanage are no longer safe even to be around. The buildings had to be abandoned. The children have been moved to a local Church down the road.

This afternoon I found this article about a young 22 year old woman who was working with Orphans in Haiti; she was killed when the 7 story building she was staying in collapsed in a “blink of an eye”. Our hearts go out to her friends and family; this story hits very close to home.

I’m sure in the days and weeks to come there will be numerous tragedies like this discovered and reported on. There really is no answer to the question of “why” even when our entire lifespan is just a breath on a cold winters morning. I have to lean heavily on the trust that there is a reason; and all the senselessness of the destruction and death and chaos will someday make sense.

As you probably are; I have been really struggling over the last couple days in trying to make sense in my heart out of all the pain and suffering and destruction that is going on in Haiti right now. I can’t make any sense of it, no matter how I try.

I’m not really sure if there is any way to make sense of it, as we are looking through a small telescope at the vastness of the universe of time, we can only see one small moment in one small area of space.

I was reminded today, in the midst of this agony of heart something I read by C.S. (Jack) Lewis, regarding the problem of pain and suffering in his book, The Great Divorce. I thought I would share.

It really brings no consolation for a broken heart: but it at least can remind us, that there is a God-view that we cannot see – and we must remember to trust and have faith.

“‘That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say ‘Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences’: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say ‘We have never lived anywhere except Heaven,’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And both will speak truly.’ – C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34864920/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34879803/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake/

http://mollyinhaiti.blogspot.com/