While I am sure the margaritas are spectacular, I really don't spend much time in the resorts. Well actually I have never been to one. Instead I head inland to the sugar cane villages. The villages are in the middle of seemingly endless fields of sugar cane. We often travel through miles of sugar cane to minister to the people who live there. These villages are the homes primarily to Haitian immigrants who have come specifically to cut the sugar cane. When you go to these places you generally see two things, lots of kids and lots of poverty.
The sugar cane workers have come to secure a better way of life for their families than they could have in Haiti. I've not been to Haiti, but if you looked at the conditions in the sugar cane villages you find it difficult to believe that this is a better way of life. I have talked to plenty of the folks who have come from Haiti and it is a desperately poor and corrupt place. Most of the Haitians in Haiti live on less than 2 dollars a day and often the children are forced, by necessity, to eat cookies make of dirt called Bon Bon Te, which roughly translates from Haitian Creole as "is very good". And so they come across the border to the Dominican Republic.
My understanding is that the average sugar cane worker is paid approximately $1.85 for cutting a metric ton of sugar (2200 lbs.) I am told that it is possible for the strongest, most able bodied men to cut 6 tons on the longest days of the summer. But in reality that rarely happens and most are able to cut far less. It is back breaking work swinging a machete for hours on end in the stifling heat. Battling the bees and wasps that are attracted to the sweetness of the sugar cane. They wear rubber boots that come mid thigh with no socks and their feet are blistered and gnarly. They have to buy their own machetes which cost around $15.00. Because they have no transportation they can not travel the miles of dirt roads to get to a grocery store or any kind of store. Besides many are there illegally and to leave the sugar cane fields means a risk of deportation. Their only choice then is to purchase needed supplies from the "company store". Most live in shacks far worse than the tool sheds we have in our backyards and sometimes and incredible amount of people will live in one tiny building. Generations now live in these "bateys" (a word for small village used only in the Dominican and Cuba). Unlike the United States there is no law that stipulates being born in the country makes you a citizen and so even to second and third generations there is always the lingering specter of deportation. They live and die in these villages without any real hope beyond a dream of a better life. It is truly modern day slavery in our hemisphere. I once asked someone why so much of the work is not with automation (a John Deere CH570 for example) and he simply replied, "people are cheap".
Wow, people are cheap. That sentence is difficult for my brain to process. And yet the attitude is prevalent. Terrorists believe people are cheap. The abortion industry believes people are cheap (even while they profit from it). Governments throughout the ages have considered people to be cheap. God however never considers people cheap.
The Bible tells us that as humans we were created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). The Bible also tells us that God loved us enough, considered us valuable enough to send His Son to pay the price for our sin. John 3:16 says "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life." If you try to really grasp the magnitude of the act it is beyond our scope of human understanding.
In the eyes of God people are not cheap. God wants to have a relationship with His creation. And he thinks we are so valuable and that He desires the love bond to be so genuine that he gives us the ability to choose to love him or not.
I find people all the time who, because of poor choices, or life circumstances, consider themselves to have little or no value. If you ever feel that way, remember how much God loves you and values you. Your value comes, not because society deems it, but because the God who created the universe and put the stars in the sky, whom the Bible says knows every hair on our head, created you, loves you and wants to have a relationship with you.
Maybe you are reading this and you having been searching for that relationship with God, but don't know where to begin. God makes it very simple:
- Acknowledge that you are a sinner in need of a savior (Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23)
- Turn from your sin (1 John 1:9).
- Tell God that you believe His Son Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart (not just your head) that God raised Jesus from the dead. (Romans 10:9).
The Bible says that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13).
Life is not cheap. People are not cheap. You are not cheap.
If you would like more information on the Christian life and what it means to be a follower of Jesus contact us at www.lifepointealliance.org.
Pastor Jeff
If you live in the Pittsburgh PA area please join us for worship Sundays at 11:00 AM. Also be sure to follow us on Facebook.
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