LESSONS FROM HAITI - Part Three

No man is an Island

‘No man is an island entire of itself; ever man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main’ John Donne.

“This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity that we all share,” President Obama said, speaking in the White House diplomatic reception room concerning the Haiti earthquake.

A time of crisis and natural disaster like the Haiti earthquake makes the world wake up with a start to the realization that no nation is an island entire of itself… that we all belong to one another.

It is pleasing to see the nations of the world rushing down to Haiti to help the people, brushing aside political differences, forgetting pet ‘isms,’ and becoming blind to racial dissimilarity.

As soon as the world heard about the catastrophe, many countries responded to the appeals for help, launched fund-raising efforts, and sent search and rescue teams – without waiting to debate in the lawmakers palaces and in the newspapers how much their help would cost and if they stood to gain anything from the their actions.

The neighboring Dominican Republic immediately sent thirty-nine trucks carrying canned food, ten mobile kitchens and one hundred and ten cooks capable of producing 100,000 meals per day. It also sent eight mobile medical units along with 36 doctors including orthopaedic specialists, traumatologists, anaesthetists, and surgeons. Towns in the eastern Dominican Republic began to prepare for tens of thousands of refugees. The hospitals in Dominican Republic were made available for Haiti refugee in need of medical help, and the airport opened to receive aid that would be distributed to Haiti.

Help came from Iceland within twenty-four hours of the earthquake. From the Middle East, the government of Qatar sent C-17, a strategic transport aircraft, loaded with 50 tonnes of urgent relief materials. With these reliefs materials came twenty-six members from the Qatari armed forces, the internal security force (Lekhwiya), police force and the Hamad Medical Corporation, to set up a field hospital and provide assistance in Port-au-Prince and other affected areas in Haiti.

A rescue team was sent by the Israel Defense Forces' Home Front Command. They established a field hospital which included specialized facilities to treat children, the elderly, and women in labor near the United Nations building in Port-au-Prince.

Canada brought in light engineering equipment, drills, the jaws of life, anything that could be carried portably.

Colombia rescue workers arrived just in time to pull a child from the rubble. The Chileans sent doctors. Sri Lanka sent security. The French assembled a clinic where parents had dug for a trapped child unsuccessfully for days. Canada brought in the big guns -- a Navy ship and Army helicopter with engineers and supplies.

The United States flew in C130s with supplies that would assist the Canadians in making Jacmel's airport the center of the rescue efforts to southern provinces not touched by the aid sent to Port-au-Prince. The supercarrier USS Carl Vinson arrived at maximum possible speed on 15 January with 600,000 emergency food rations, 100,000 ten-litre water containers, and an enhanced wing of 19 helicopters; 130,000 litres of drinking water were transferred to shore on the first day.

The helicopter carrier USS Bataan sailed with three large dock landing ships and two survey/salvage vessels, to create a "sea base" for the rescue effort. They were joined by the French Navy vessel Francis Garnier on 16 January, the same day the hospital ship USNS Comfort and guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill left for Haiti. Another large French vessel was later ordered to Haiti, the amphibious transport dock Siroco.

British search and rescue teams arrived in Léogane, the town at the epicentre of the quake, on 17 January.

UN forces patrolled the streets of Port-au-Prince. The International Charter on Space and Major Disasters was activated, allowing satellite imagery of affected regions to be shared with rescue and aid organisations. Members of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook spread messages and pleas to send help.
Seeing people from different countries working together – and not bombing one another – as a team, makes one feel happy. A U.S. mobile air traffic control tower was moved to Haiti by a Russian transport plane. Cuban doctors worked side by side with doctors from ‘anti-Castro’ countries.

God makes all this possible because He is a good God. The devil, on the contrary, is a bad devil. If he had his way, the Haitians would rot under some rubbles or die of lack of medical treatment or of starvation.

If countries with different political doctrines and other one hundred and one differences could work together to help one of them in need, in a world suffering from the devil’s evil system, one can only imagine what the world will be like when the Prince of Peace, the Lord Jesus Christ, takes over the direct leadership of the world, as King of kings, after the battle of Armageddon.

After the battle of Armageddon in which the Lord will prove His victorious omnipotence to the anti-Christ and his soldiers, the King of kings will begin to reign in the Holy City of heavenly Jerusalem – for one thousand years (Revelation 16: 12-16; Revelation 19:19-20; Isaiah 60:10-17; Isaiah 62:3).
His ministers and governors and kings, who will be ruling with Him, are those who have followed Him faithfully on earth, doing His will, suffering for His name’s sake (2Tim. 2:12; Rev. 20:6).

Christ’s kingdom will be characterized by unprecedented peace and righteousness. People of all nations of the world will become as one. War and natural disasters will become a thing of the past. The original curse will be removed and there will be prosperity like the world as never seen (Isaiah 32:1; Isaiah 9:7; Psalm 72:1,2; Zech.9:10-12; Micah 4:2,3).

Even the animal creations will share in the peace and joy of Christ’s kingdom. They will lose their ferociousness and the fiercest of them will become as tame and gentle as lamb. (Isaiah 62:25; Rom 8:19-22; Isaiah 35:1-2).