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Too Many Coats
If you have 2 coats, you've stolen one from the poor. Dorothy Day

Figuring out how to live out all the gospel all the time...
Friday, March 11, 2005
Prelude to Ferrier, 3. And We're Off!

In approximately 2 hours, we'll be on the road to the airport and our trip to Haiti will have officially begun. After a long week that has included a funeral, a day in Dallas, a baby shower, two visits to the doctor, our weekly TV night at Carlton's, and a mad scramble to finish God's Politics by Jim Wallis, all I have left to do is pack.

I don't believe I've been this excited to fly in quite a while! I generally loathe travel by air, and I'm pretty sure I'll make it a point to take a heavy dose of Dramamine to knock me out, but I'm still very much giddy about this trip.

As I said, I squeezed in some time this week to finish the final 70 pages of Wallis' new book--which primarily addressed politics and procedures in America. Now I leave for a neighbor of America who has, for the most part, been systematically ignored by those same politics and procedures. Undoubtedly, when I arrive in Haiti, I'll be instantly hit with a wave of frustration and anger at the dire situation that is simply a stone's throw off the coast of the richest nation in the world. Cynicism will surely try to raise its ugly head. However, I must take note from Wallis and remind myself that I have a choice between cynicism and hope. I could grow cynical of how we could allow the typical Haitian to get by with a dollar a day, while we send our own vacationers to secluded and protected resorts on Haiti's coast. But as Wallis notes, "cynicism protects you from commitment." So as I grow frustrated and angry towards the world I come from, I risk growing cynically apathetic. And once that happens, change becomes oblique. For change to occur, I have to strive to be hopeful. "Hope is not a feeling; it is a decision," writes Wallis.

So as we travel, continue to pray for our brokenness, but also pray for our hopefulness.

This will be my last post until our return on Palm Sunday. Expect an immediate, but brief update that day in the late afternoon.

Until then, thank you for your continued prayers.

Here's to change...

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old, I am about to do a new thing: now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
--Isaiah 43:18-19

4 Comments:

At 11:10 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Have an awesome trip!

 
At 1:32 PM, Blogger lucas said...

hey aaron,

thought you were going to loan me the book... have an awesome trip!!

 
At 10:36 PM, Blogger Ellis Family said...

hey man - hope the trip went well..let me know how it went

 
At 10:40 AM, Blogger Aaron said...

hey lucas,

it's sittin here waiting on you!

 

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