Hi Everyone,
My Grandparents house has crumbled with them inside. I have lost my grandfather and my family is digging as we speak for my grandmother. Please pray for us.

This came from one of the friends I spent two weeks in Belize with this past summer. Much of her family resides in Haiti and has, as the message ominously dictates, been involuntarily given a lead role in one of Haiti’s worst natural disasters.

Yesterday a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti. The Red Cross estimates 1/3 Haitians have been affected—roughly 3 million.

My problems seem pretty insignificant right now. I have a home, I have transportation, I have my family and friends.

Raymond Joseph, a Haitian ambassador to the US, said of the disaster, “God has given, God has taken away.” It’s difficult for me to comprehend being taken to such devastation and yet able to view the situation so rationally. Haiti has dealt with over 30 coups and countless hurricanes in its 200 some odd years of life. The history of Haiti, as with so much of the world, has been recorded in blood.

Today, if you wake up and don’t want to go to work because you can’t stand the person in the cubicle next to you, Google “Haiti.” You’ll be giving that same person a hug when you arrive. Sometimes, the best we can do from afar when disaster strikes, is live our own lives twice as purposefully.

Read more on the quake here.