"By this all men will know that you are my disciples ..."

An earthquake matching the power of several nuclear bombs struck the island nation of Haiti about 5:00 PM, Tuesday, January 12th. According to the U.S. Geological Survey report, the quake was centered about 10 Miles southwest of Port-au-Prince and reached a magnitude of 7.0.

The Red Cross has estimated that about 3 million people, amounting to one-third of Haiti’s entire population, have been affected by the quake. Although it is too early to tell, some officials feel that 50,000 to 100,000 people have lost their lives. Haiti is the most impoverished nation of the Western Hemisphere and this quake has dealt them a tremendous blow.

Those are the hard details to date that you will see on various news outlets. However, the final and most important detail of all is … that every one of those people affected by this catastrophe are individually and unqualifiedly loved by Jesus Christ!

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son ..."

The people of the world (the world includes Haiti) are our brothers and sisters and we have been commissioned, by our God, to love them as He loves us. John explains it very well in 1 John 4:9-11:

This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about — not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God. My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. (from THE MESSAGE)

Our first task of love is to drop to our knees and pray for these people. Not just pray, my friends, but PRAY! Pray without ceasing. "The hospitals cannot handle all these victims," said Louis-Gerard Gilles, a doctor and former senator. "Haiti needs to pray. We all need to pray together."

Secondly, we must do what we physically can to help these people. Officials who are close to the situation recommend that the greatest thing you can do is to send cash to your favorite relief agency. Nearly every one of them have gotten on the band wagon and have well developed programs to deal with disaster.

Jesus said it … "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Let's all show ourselves as disciples and love our brothers and sisters in Haiti.

Larry Abele - Editorial Team