These are photos from my trip to Haiti May 2 through 11.
Let me rephrase that... These are photos of baby Adele Mercy May 2 through 11.
I've been somewhat of a slacker these days (life. is. crazy.) and haven't had the opportunity to share these photos, but I hope that you would take the time to look at them. As you do, you will come across a few pictures of a baby sitting alone in the dirt. Even now, a month later, it feels as if my heart is ripped out of my chest when I look at that baby. Quite honestly, it makes me sick to my stomach. After I asked the mother to let me hold the baby, she pulled him up with one hand underneath his arm and with a knife in the other hand. No compassion, no love, no feeling. Just another inconvenient mouth to feed. I wish I could have done something more for that baby.
As I shared this with Holly (the youth pastor's wife at Jubilee), she showed me this verse that brought me to tears with the relation to this story:
"On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for you were despised. Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, 'Live!'. I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels."
Ezekiel 16:4-7
The thing about our God is that He is able to lift us up out of the dirt and redeem us, that though we have power to do nothing, He is more than able. Though we are dirty and despised, His love and compassion make us beautiful once more. I have to hope. For the sake of that baby, hope is all that's left. May these photos bring light to the darkness and hope to the hopeless.
