Past, Present, and Future

Matthew 19:16-22
And behold, one came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?" And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments." He said to him, "Which?" And Jesus said, "You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The young man said to him, "All these I have observed; what do I still lack?" Jesus said to him, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.

This is a parable about the rich man in Jesus. Although we may not think of ourselves as rich, when we compare ourselves to the people in Haiti, we are some of the richest people on the planet. Many times in the Bible, Jesus tells his followers and listeners to give to the poor or that the poor are better off spiritually than the rich, as he does here. We are bound by the Bible to help the people in Haiti, even if it means selling away half our possessions.

After we discussed this passage from the Bible, we started talking about spiritual gifts, which was one of the scriptures from our church service. Everyone has a gift, but most people don't realize what their gift is until later on in life. We're teenagers, so none of us really know what we want to do or be in the future. As we talked among ourselves, though, it became somewhat clear that the person who recognized their respective gift(s) the least was the actual person; in other words, everybody else would be telling you your gift before you thought of it.

Eventually, we pulled ourselves back towards our verses about Jesus and how the "many that are first will be last, and the last first (Matthew 19:30)." We ended up jumping around through all sorts of different verses in the Bible, though. Through all of our verse jumps, one of us made a remark regarding the parable of the prodical son. When people were getting pulled out of the rubble in Haiti, most people stalled on the thought of how many others were not saved. Instead, we should be joyful like the father of the prodical son and think along the lines of "woo-hoo; we saved one more!" Every life saved, whether spiritually or physically, is important to God, and we should rejoice whenever a life is saved.

At a local church camp, we hold Emmaus and Chyrsillis walks as spiritual retreats. At these retreats, according to some of our youth who have been on these walks, the leaders invoke the image of a stool to support you with three legs: faith, action, and study. Some people may feel more comfortable with one leg over another or the others, but all of the legs need to be there for a stable support. Most people are most comfortable with faith and study over action; this has led to many criticisms of Christians in that we do not live up to our faith, which is probably true for the most part. We need to live and do more for our community and others across the globe, such as in Haiti.

To be better Christians, we need to be more active, not solely rely on faith and study to get us through. What better an opportunity to help than in Haiti? The disaster in Haiti is horrible, but it opens up hundreds of thousands of opportunities to be active and become better Christians. Every person has to take a different path to God, and sometimes it can take a crisis like Haiti to show the right path.