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By Dan Williams, Director of Spiritual Integration

A weekly series from HOPE’s director of spiritual integration

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

As we continue to dive into God’s requirements of us in Micah 6:8, let’s look at what it means to walk humbly. This may be the hardest one, but stick with me.

In all of my travels, one of the most fascinating historical sights I have visited is La Citadelle in northern Haiti. After Haiti won its independence from France in a slave rebellion in 1804, the first Haitian king of the North built an enormous fortress on the mountains overlooking the sea to protect the island from a French return. It may be one of the most impressive structures I’ve ever visited. The tragic irony of this fortress is that the Haitian king built the fortress using slave labor—enslaving 20,000 of his kinsman for its construction, with thousands perishing during the project due to overwork.

Why would a king, who was granted his kingdom through a rebellion of slaves, turn around and enslave his own people for a huge construction project? At a certain point, that king became so concerned with protecting his kingdom that he didn’t care what it cost the people he was supposed to be protecting. Continue Reading…

haiti 4-edit

by Jess Bauer, California Development Intern

Last summer, I spent three months in Haiti learning about poverty in a hands-on and often heart-wrenching way. I listened to the stories of new friends and experienced the heartbreaking reality of material poverty.

One afternoon, I met an elderly man in Leveque, a village where families resettled after their homes were destroyed by the 2010 earthquake. A relief agency had distributed blue tarps to Leveque after the earthquake to be used as a temporary shelter. The tarps were designed for only a few months of inhabitance—any longer and the extreme heat could cause eye damage. After living in his tarp home for five years, this man was completely blind.

Continue Reading…