A Big Picture

Weekend Status: youth group purity retreat.

Happy reunion with the beautiful middle schoolers I worked with over the summer!

Insightful/awkward conversations about love, sex, and dating!

Dance parties!

And if I hear "Party in the USA" one more time... I really might throw up.

In the middle of all of these conversations and teaching, there's Haiti. We've been praying for quick aid and necessary rescue each time we get together with the students, and they've even raised money to send over. Even with that recognition, it's weird to me to have such a personal topic of focus this weekend. Before this morning's talk, we stopped to pray for our Haitian brothers again, and Casey (pastor) asked me to look up the death toll.

They've only found 50,000 bodies, but the highest estimate is that over 200,000 people died in the last 5 days from this one catastrophe.

The kids ended their prayer and the worship band started playing. I didn't sing; I read through that article...

...and looked at these pictures...

...and wondered what living a life of purity has to do with Haiti?

How can we focus on ourselves and our relationships when everything in those pictures is really happening right now?

God-centeredness. That's what these things have in common.

When it comes to purity, all I've really been able to tell these girls is that a focus on glorifying God will lead to right decisions in relationships.

When it comes to Haiti, hope, help, and compassion, a focus on God being glorified pulls us out of the "How could this happen?" despair and moves us to act, to pray, even to go.

In other words: we quit thinking about ourselves.

We start thinking about the end for which we were created.

We start loving. Really loving.

-Katie