The need in Haiti seems huge and overwhelming and far beyond my capacity to do anything to help. I think the people of Israel must have felt that same way when they came back from seventy years of exile to find their beloved Holy City in ruins. The first group who came back must have stared at the rubble in dismay. Jeremiah wrote a whole book about the devastation right after the Romans burned Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. His Lamentations record his sorrow, but also his hope. The book of despair also holds this great statement of hope: God’s mercies are new every morning.

That promise must have echoed somehow in the broken city gates of Jerusalem. It must have drifted through the valleys and mounted up on the hilltop. Somehow, the people got the strength to rebuild. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah record the decades of progress as first the wall is rebuilt and then the altar.

One of the most amazing things to me is how they orchestrated the whole thing. It was a massive undertaking. But they did it one stone at a time. Every family working on their little section of the wall. Every man setting his stone in place until the city had been restored.

So, I have sent my small donation to Haiti. It is not a sizable stone, but it was my part to play in the rebuilding. It was my assigned section on the wall.