"If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, "Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?" Jesus answered him, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me." --Jesus in John 14

We've been praying fervently over the last week for a little boy in Haiti named Job. When we met him in January at Wings of Hope, a home for disabled and handicapped children in Fermathe, Haiti, he was suffering from encephalitis. The disease was causing his brain to swell and create too much pressure for his little body. Anyone in the US with the same problem would have been whisked away to a hospital for treatment. It wouldn't be so for him.

His story weighed heavily on our hearts, and folks were able to pull enough money together once we returned stateside to get Job to a hospital in Haiti to have the procedure done to alleviate the pressure. Unfortunately, while the procedure did help for a while, Job died this week from complications post-surgery.

Job was an orphan until Wings of Hope took him in. When they did, he stopped being an orphan and became family. It's hard to call any of the places the Haitian Timoun Foundation sponsors "orphanages." These kids aren't up for adoption, and the way that the St. Joseph's organization approaches its mission steers us away from this designation. These children, having been thrown out by their own families and treated like trash in their own society, are adopted into a new family, one of faith, hope, and love.

Jesus promises us that he won't leave us as orphans. And he didn't leave Job as an orphan. He surrounded Job with the family of Wings of Hope, a family only God could build. While Job has died, he has entered a new life, one of no suffering and of true belonging and where Jesus comes through on his promises. He was a teacher always, showing us what it is to live in the hope of God's new future.

His story is one of thousands in Haiti, which are always pressing the need for urgent attention. But less we just see the death of yet another child, we are reminded there was much more happening here than meets the eye. Jesus was coming through on his promise for Job. "You will not be an orphan. I will make my home with those who love me."

I've visited Jesus' home. It's in the hills surrounding Port-au-Prince and the capital of despair.