Is this the best we can do?

I am having another judgmental moment. (They seems to come a lot lately.)

This billboard has been in Haiti for over a year now.

Actually, this is the second one they put in almost the same place. The old one was higher up... This one just hovers over the tents where people have lived for a nearly A YEAR AND A HALF.

Here's the translation: Are you in desolation (ruin, devastation)? Jesus is your hope.

Every single time I see this billboard I get angry. It's not that I don't think that Jesus is still relevant and has the power to speak hope into any situation, it's just that MAN, this is SO freaking trite.

I don't want to speak for anyone else but I feel certain if I had to wake up every morning in my damp, moldy, muddy tent and see THAT sign, I'd probably want nothing to do with the God they're talking about.

Lately as I have been trying to ask big questions about faith/God/Jesus/the Bible, I've come down to this-- The whole Jesus thing is about love. And it's love for/from God (through Jesus.) And it's love for others. The way we tangibly walk in that love and "work out our salvation" is in community with other people who strive to walk in this love.

I recently saw an "urgent" question posted on an international midwifery forum about whether or not a certain shot needed to be given after abortion. The first responder just RAILED on the person asking the question saying something like, "Well maybe if you had kept your legs closed you wouldn't have gotten pregnant and you wouldn't need to kill your baby." It was followed by many other people chastising that commenter for her lack of empathy and pointing out that we know nothing about the context of this situation. Is it possible that the woman using the word abortion was referring to a spontaneous abortion-- (more commonly known as a miscarriage)? In many other cultures (and this is an international forum) the words are interchangeable. Do we know the circumstances of the conception? She was railed for getting pregnant. Maybe that wasn't her choice. Maybe she was raped. Regardless of my stance on the abortion issue, one thing was clear-- I wanted nothing to do with the message of that hateful woman. One commenter summed it up best with this comment-- "Wrong place, wrong time."

That's how I feel about the sign. Wrong place, wrong time. Whether or not I agree with the message that Jesus is the hope for people in ruin is somewhat irrelevant when it's presented in this way.