The last two weeks have been particularly emotional. As the Vice President of Information Technology at Compassion International I am particularly connected to people and places around the world. So when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the small island nation of Haiti in the late afternoon of January 12, 2010 my heart stopped. Compassion currently helps more than 65,000 children in Haiti. We have over 7 local Haitian staff members and at the time of the earthquake there was a group of Canadian Sponsors, as well as two U.S. web/video journalists in the country. The Canadian group had just arrived in Haiti when the earthquake hit and diverted to the Canadian embassy and then back out of the country.

The two U.S. team members, however, had just entered the Hotel Montana and were crossing the lobby when the hotel collapsed on top of them. Separated in the chaos and confusion they wound up in different places. Dan Woolley found himself injured and bleeding, but used his SLR camera to take flash photos of his surroundings and made his way safely into an elevator shaft. 65 hours later he would be rescued. As of this writing (11 days after the earthquake) we have still not heard from David Hames.

Dan Woolley being pulled from the rubble of the Hotel Montana in Port Au Prince Haiti

Watching people frantically search for loved ones after the earthquake has been heart wrenching. A husband grasps and tears at cement block and rebar with his bear hands and calls out for help to anyone passing by because his wife lay under the rubble of what used to be their house. His hands are shredded and bleeding but he can’t slow down, every second counts.

It is with this same ferocity that God pursues us. His love for us so deep and His desire for us so strong that He desperately wants us be rescued from the rubble of broken lives. Like a shepherd who runs into the darkness of night to find a sheep that has wandered off or a mother who has misplaced the money for the weeks groceries and is tearing apart the house in order to find it, God goes to great lengths to be reconnected with us.

I can’t claim to understand what God is thinking as I watch in horror the devastation of an already devastated group of people. But I do know that He loves each and every one of them with an incomprehensible love which far exceeds my ability to understand it.