Editor's Note: Author Andy Crouch originally used this story to illustrate that we don't need to be enslaved to technology. You could delete the references to technology and use this story to illustrate praise or worship or gratitude.

On January 12, 2010, a massive and devastating earth quake struck just outside Port-au-Prince, the capital city of Haiti. Countless buildings in the city collapsed and over a hundred thousand lives were lost. The already shaky power grid was effectively destroyed, along with every other form of infrastructure. That night, with aftershocks rolling through the ground, almost all the residents of the city and the surrounding countryside stayed outside, torn with grief and fear. The residents of the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere had little access to the easy-everywhere life of technology even before the earthquake, and now, with their world in ruins, they had none.

An article on NPR summarized it this way: "For the Western hemisphere's poorest country, the earthquake that hit Haiti in January [2010] was an especially cruel blow. Despite this, it's hard to find a Haitian who doesn't profess a belief in a loving God."

And they sang. When you don't have technology, you still have song. When you've lost everything, in fact, you still have song. All over the hills of Haiti those first terrible nights, under the starlit sky, the voices of the people of Haiti rose up in grief and lament, in prayer and hope.

They had something we have almost lost—and they still have it, as anyone who has visited a Haitian church or family knows. We can have it in our homes, and in our churches too, if we choose not to let technology do the singing for us.