(Long post warning: if you’re short on time, just pray with us for God’s light of truth and power to penetrate some nearby darkness!)
So last night we heard some music (i.e., drums and singing/chanting) coming from a neighbor’s house a few blocks down the path toward the river. This is unusual for our area, so we decided to go walk that direction and pray — and investigate.
Someone declared ahead of time that they were voodoo drums, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe that. I tossed it around as I prayed and walked that way with the group. Ever hopeful, as we neared the house and then passed it, I even asked aloud: how do we really *know* it’s voodoo? I mean, is it maybe just someone playing music and the drums happen to be pretty loud (but still innocent)? Or maybe they and their friends even have their own musical instruments and are playing with a “garage band”? (Not that anybody has a “garage” here in Haiti, but you know what I mean.)
That’s when someone in our group answered that if I would just go back and look in the front yard, I would see a pretty clear signal with the fire they were burning: there was an upside-down cross front and center in it.
Sure enough, when I glanced, I saw two pieces of wood in the shape of a cross. I was aghast, in disbelief. But wait. Maybe it wasn’t *really* an upside down cross, surely not. Maybe it was just the way the light of the fire was making a few pieces of wood *look* like they were arranged that way. Maybe I’d just seen it from a bad angle. Surely that was it.
Surely no one would actually dare to invert — and burn!! — the cross on which my Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died. Surely. !!!!!
But when I looked again (from a different angle this time), it was pretty unmistakably exactly what we’d thought: a firmly-constructed, purposefully-arranged, horrible sacrilege.
That just breaks my heart. 
I know there are people involved in asking for alleged “services” from the voodoo false prophets here, and I even know that there are some who attend church and are trying to believe and follow Jesus who are not opposed to that practice, who see nothing wrong with “adding it in” as an attempt to just “cover all the bases” (which we know means they’ve not yet learned — or decided — to follow only Jesus.) Until last night, I’d just always thought they had been fooled, tricked, that they just didn’t know that it involved real, actual spiritual forces that were directly opposed to God, kind of like young kids who hear and wonder about Ouija boards but then quickly abandon those ideas when they learn how it involves demonic forces. These also just needed a chance to learn, to hear and see the truth, then they’d surely realize that they needed to make a choice to serve God only, that it wasn’t okay or even possible to try to do both.
But that fire in the yard. That’s pretty hard to deny or excuse or explain away. The cross of Jesus Christ, the instrument used to torture our Lord while He was purchasing our forgiveness from sin in order to complete restoration of our full, complete relationship with Him, THAT was prominently displayed as the centerpiece, upside down, in a fire. No follower of Jesus who’d seen that could possibly find a way to say they “didn’t know” that voodoo is a horrid, repugnant, abominable practice that is 100% opposed to God. Man. That fire gave such a clear picture of that fact; not just 1000 words, like they say, but more like a million or so.
That completely inspires me to pray more specifically, to worship Jesus more loudly, to stand more seriously. It is not in the least bit discouraging, because of one of my favorite phrases in the Bible: “But God…”
We were all lost in despicable deeds done in darkness, but God decided to open our eyes so we could see the truth and to redeem us out of that! We know a former witch doctor who met Jesus and loves Him wholeheartedly.
Reportedly, there are plans for another ritual there tonight. Won’t you join and pray with us that God’s light will penetrate that darkness and bring hearts to know Him? To *know that Jesus is the only way? To give their whole hearts to loving and following Him!!!
““And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Ephesians 2:1-10 ESV