I Can't Not

At 8:15 this morning, when I came around the side of the small building we use  to house our medical supplies, what I saw made my heart jump: about 250 people  waiting patiently for someone who would sometime today take the time to listen  to their problems (and they have many) examine their wounds, and treat them.  It  took us all day, of course, to work our way through the crowd.  At times  portions of the crowd became impatient and riled, so much so that, at one point  I had to suspend our activities and warn them that, if we couldn't have order,  we would close up shop.  It made me feel mean and I hated saying it, because  inside I knew I could not have carried through on a threat like that.  We sent another team of 10 to yet another nearby village to treat people there.   They treated nearly a hundred of the injured in that town.  It's 10 PM and I'm sitting on a chair outside the guys' tent (listening to a  snore-fest). It's the only time segment in my day that I can allot to blogging.   Tonight, as I do so, I get a sense of the feeling that Jesus must have had when  he went from town to town, crowds ever pressing in.  How exhausting.  I have a new appreciation for the account in Scripture where it said that Jesus  went, and saw the crowds, and had compassion on them. How can your heart not  break when you hold the mother of a child who did not make it? Or hear the  Creole hymns sung by those waiting on hard, backless benches, all suffering to  one degree or another?  Congressman Rooney caught me off guard yesterday.  We had had a good and  interesting discussion about the important role of the community of faith in  issues of social justice. Then he locked his eyes on mine. In candid, honest  curiosity, he asked me, "Why are you doing this?" After a few seconds of  reflection, my answer was simply this: " I can't not do this."  I came, I have seen, and I have absorbed a bit of Haiti's pain into my being.   And I can't not respond.  Steve