Things that are broken in the world

From CBSNews.com:

Ten Americans were detained by Haitian police on Saturday as they tried to bus 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic, allegedly without proper documents.

The Baptist church members from Idaho called it a “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission,” meant to save abandoned children from the chaos following Haiti’s earthquake. Their plan was to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a rented hotel at a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, where they planned to establish an orphanage.

Whether they realized it or not, these Americans - the first known to be taken into custody since the Jan. 12 earthquake - put themselves in the middle of a firestorm in Haiti, where government leaders have suspended adoptions amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to child trafficking.

“In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing,” the group’s leader, Laura Silsby, told reporters at the judicial police headquarters in the capital, where the Americans were being held.

You should read the whole story. The web site for one of the churches with people who were arrested gives this brief statement:

A ten member church team traveled to Haiti to help rescue children from one or more orphanages that had been devastated in the earthquake on January 12. The children were being taken to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic where they could be cared for and have their medical and emotional needs attended to. Our team was falsely arrested today and we are doing everything we can from this end to clear up the misunderstanding that has occurred in Port au Prince.

It’s an interesting tension — a small group of Christians want to give the aid they are equipped for because there are many orphans, and many abandoned children. The Haitian government wants everyone to make sure that the completely heinous crime of child trafficking is thwarted.

I think they both want the same thing in theory, but they are using different powers to combat what is broken in this world. In a real way, this is a parable about the Christian life — if you read it closely.

So go back and read it closely. You might offer up some prayers about it from all sides.