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I have never experienced an earthquake, nor can I imagine the damage that comes from the earth violently shaking under your feet at a strength of 7.0 on the scale.  Buildings falling, people being killed before your eyes, homes collapsing and all hope gone are only a few descriptions coming out of the news from Haiti today.  One story I read on line had a sub-title that you will see below, with one paragraph of the story to follow.

“Please take me out”

Sobbing and dazed people wandered the streets of Port-au-Prince, and voices cried out from the rubble. “Please take me out, I am dying. I have two children with me,” a woman told a journalist from under a collapsed kindergarten. The International Red Cross said some 3 million people may have been affected. Haitian Red Cross spokesman Pericles Jean-Baptiste said his organization was overwhelmed. “There are too many people who need help … We lack equipment, we lack body bags,” he said Wednesday.

I cannot help but equate this story to the spiritual condition many people are in when their world is rocked by challenges and difficulties.  When any of us, but especially someone who doesn’t know Christ, experiences something devastating like a hurricane, tornado or a violent earthquake, or lives through a divorce or a death of a loved one or an unexpected job change, the world seems to turn upside down.  And what do we do?  Where do we turn for sanity or comfort or hope?  For those who know Christ, we don’t need to wait until a disaster comes in someone’s life and assume we don’t have the equipment or the ability to do anything to help.  We need to get the gospel to the lost before they experience another life-altering challenge, so that when the difficulty comes, their personal relationship with God through Christ will carry them through.  Everyone of us are missionaries whether it is during a natural disaster or a spiritual disaster.  People are hurting and need Christ whether they have lost their home in an earthquake or lost their home because they lost their job.  In any case, and in all cases, people need the Lord.

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