Living Love Letters

In my mind I attempt to write letters to the people of Haiti all of the time.   

Every time these letters fail to get completed.  The truth is they never go past the thought of writing them.   

The moment I picture these precious people, my soul is immersed with desperation for them.  In my own strength I am unable to withstand their reality.  It’s just too much.  So, the notion of me writing pretty words on fancy stationary paper to my friends in Haiti quickly converts to the actuality of me falling on my knees before the throne of God in prayer.   

Jesus, how long will these people have to suffer?  My mind can’t understand any of this.  It is oppressive to me.  Please don’t let the flood waters swallow them.  I pray to you, O LORD.  Can you hear me?  Please turn you ear to me.  Jesus I am calling on your Name.  Nothing I offer will be sufficient to cover their distress and grieved spirits.  I can’t change the hard truths of their difficult lives.  A mother watches her children go to sleep on mud floors.  A father wakes up to the sad eyes of his children looking to him for food that he does not have to offer them.  Jesus, I don’t know what to pray for them.  I just cry out for Your Name to cover them.  

 My words fall short. 

Today, after attempting to write another letter to Haiti and once again coming up empty, I came across 2 Corinthians 3:3.

“You show that you are a letter from Christ…written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

This was so sweet to me…In Christ, we can be living love letters to the hurting world around us.  Shakespeare’s most eloquent descriptions are rubbish in comparison to the brilliance of "living love letters" from Christ himself.  

I don’t have to rack my brain to come up with words of comfort to offer in a letter written in ink that will be stamped, sent through the mail, and soon stored in a box under a bed with pretty red hearts sealed on the envelope. 

No. 

Most of the Haitians I know don’t even have a bed to store such things under. 

They need real Jesus love…they need living love letters that are understood regardless of ones language or ability to read…they need tangible acts of love displayed through our sacrifice of time, giving, and most of all our prayers. 

To be a living love letter is to heed the simple words of Jesus in John 15:17. 

Jesus, help us to be your living love letters.  Make your Spirit fully alive in us to write out your deep love onto the human hearts of the hurting world.