butler blake

Sitting still for 2 hours isn’t something I usually budget for in my week, but right now I’m doing that somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico.

This time last Monday I was just walking into the church that I’m employed at ready for another week. It would be nothing more than that. I would do some design work, plan a few weeks out, attend some meetings, take long lunches, and then get ready for Sunday. We’re always getting ready for Sunday.

I woke up on Tuesday morning in an especially thankful mood, which is strange for me at 7:00 in the morning. The feeling, as I remember it, was a general feeling of gratitude of where I was and why the Lord had lead me to that place.

After a chicken salad sandwich from a Ruston deli, I got back to my office and immediately had visitors. It was the 2 youth ministers from my church. They wanted me to go to Haiti with them- on Monday. Five days to get ready to go serve and get video footage in a foreign country. I’m up for the challenge. Right?

Luckily I had my passport and most of my vaccinations were up to date (don’t tell my mom, I think I’m missing one or two). I made necessary trips to get the things I would need, I rented some camera gear, and I took my prescribed malaria medicine, but I didn’t feel prepared.

The past few months I’ve come to grips with lots of things. One of those is this: when presented with nothing but new things it’s really simple to throw your hands in the air, sigh, and exclaim, “I’m just too damn busy.” But it’s the illusion of busy-ness. I make time for lots of things during my week (most of those involve food and THINKING about exercising), and it seems I make time only for the things I hold as a high priority. Sabbath rest and “being” were not the things I viewed as having much consequence and weight. I defaulted to striving and doing. Abiding was a word I had lost meaning too.

So I’m scrambling around Northeast Louisiana trying to prepare for a trip for 10 days to a 3rd world country and I’m tired. I’m not- tired I’m weary.
Luckily, one of my great friends is a musician in one of my favorite worship leader, Aaron Keyes, band. They were scheduled to be in a town about 30 minutes from my own. I moved some things around and I went to hangout, knowing I left for Haiti only hours later and I wasn’t prepared.

Good friends and good conversation is rest for me, and God has made it a habit of filling me up through rest. Funny how that works. So I get to the venue where Aaron was leading worship that night, and sat through sound check and abetting with them. The band started the first set and I realized that it was the firs time I had been able to simple BE in a worship service and hangs no responsiblity in months and months. Rest.

During the set I prayed that God would prepare me and equip me to go, and it hit me. I had Bren packing bags, making arrangements and rushing around that I had completely neglected to just BE and be loved so that I could love other people. Ultimately thats the only thing I’m called to do while I’m in Haiti. Everything that I do while in Haiti should come out of an attitude of love for the people that live in the impoverished country. I struggled with what should be my correct response to seeing the poverty and how should I mentally prepare to see it. But looking at it all through the lens of being loved so that I can be loved I don’t know if I can be more prepared or equipped.

I just rembered, I did forget my chapstick though.