Haiti Blog

We've leaving this morning! While we're gone, I won't be updating this blog because our internet access will be very limited, but we will be periodically updating a blog on the church website at firstpreslax.org.

"Mission of Romance"

The La Crosse Tribune published an article about our trip to Haiti a few days ago, the title of which was "Mission of Romance." The article itself is a fair depiction of our trip, and I recommend you read it (some people I love a lot are quoted!), but it misses the mark in a key area: Romance is not our mission. Ours is a mission of redeeming, of affirming the covenant of marriage and celebrating love that is commitment, not ceremony, of reawakening--or at least celebrating, for who is to say that it has not already been awakened, or even that it has been extinguished?--the joy and wonder of the gift of marriage.

Granted, so far my firsthand experience with marriage is limited to that of an observer. But during the last six weeks of my freshman year, my Bible study examined love, sex, and marriage in the context of the Bible and tried to build a framework of understanding how Christians are called to live out our sexuality, and as I consider the mission that is set before our team I've fallen again and again back on this framework. I had the privilege of working with my dad, who I'm co-leading the trip with (along with a third leader, Laura), on a set of daily devotions for our group while we're in Haiti, and although I'm excited to see how God uses each of them--and not only the devotions, but the whole experience, really--to open the students' eyes more and more to His goodness, the one I'm most excited for explores marriage: What does our culture say it is, and what does the Bible say it is? I'll share with you some of the ways that we're going to look at marriage in our devotions--and since the students won't have access to the internet for the next 10 days, they won't have all the answers ahead of time! Let's look at some of the reasons marriage is important...


1) We were created to be in relationship

Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our own image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made…. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3, 14)

Basically, even though as God's children we are fundamentally complete in Him (so I'm not saying that celibacy or singleness means people are less than fully human), the foundation of the world--before it even physically existed--was relationship: between God, the Word (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. We're created in God's image, so we, too, are built for relationships, both with God and with others--particularly the relationship of marriage.


2) Marriage helps us understand God’s love for us and relationship with us

God and Israel (Old Testament)

She [Israel] will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, “I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.”…
“In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’… I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion.” (Hosea 2:7, 16, 19)

For your Maker is your [Israel’s] husband—the Lord Almighty is his name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. (Isaiah 54:5)

Jesus and the Church (New Testament)

Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear. (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of God’s people.) (Revelation 19:7-8)

I love this; the imagery that the Bible gives us of God's love for us is so incredibly intense. In the Old Testament, the relationship between God and Israel is often described as that of a passionately loving husband and his adulterous, unfaithful wife, respectively. Even though I've only excerpted Hosea here, I recommend reading the whole book (it's not too long) to get the complete story, but it is one of my favorite books for understanding the marvelous depth and furiousness of God's love for us. Note: it's written by a prophet whom God called to actually embody the metaphor of God and Israel as husband and unfaithful wife by marrying a prostitute. Then in the New Testament, a common theme is that the church is Jesus' bride, being purified for their eventual marriage. The imagery in Revelation is stunning, but it appears in other places in the New Testament also, including in the Ephesians passage that follows this one and 2 Corinthians 11:2.


3) Marriage sanctifies, or makes us holy as we serve someone else

Submit to one another out of reverend for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, people have never hated their own bodies, but they feed and care for them, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body.
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:21-33)

I wondered about including this passage in our study because it can be a touchy one for Christians when that "s" word in verse 22 comes up. But consider the context: this is an incredible love! What a vision for marriage. In contrast to a culture that seems to promote marriage for the sake of increasing one's own pleasure ("How happy does he/she make me?"), this is an image of humility and service ("How can I serve him/her?"). Certainly happiness is a vital consideration for entering into a marriage, but what makes it endure is a commitment to humble service, which also sanctifies. What a privilege to walk alongside couples in Haiti who are reaffirming their dedication to each other!


We leave tomorrow morning, bright and early, and after a day of driving, flying, and stopping for the night in Ft. Lauderdale, we'll be in Haiti on Saturday morning to begin our preparations for the wedding of 21+ couples on Tuesday. Please keep Clair, Annie, Kendall, Rachel, Fred, Soren, Richard, Evan, Chet, Hudson, Taylor, Laura, and me in your prayers, but alongside us, please lift up the couples we will be meeting who are, in a sense, renewing the vows to each other that they made not in a church before friends and neighbors, but before God "who sees what is done in secret" (Matthew 6:4, 18)--or at least outside the walls of a church.