With the recent attack on our staff in Pakistan and the Haiti and Chile earthquakes come a reminder that there is evil in the world. These events also remind us that the answer to evil—to violence—is love.

Love is more powerful than hate. Light is more powerful than darkness. Good is more powerful than evil.

The story of Palm Sunday and Easter is that in going to the cross, Jesus became the victim of all hatred and evil—yet He defeated it through His love. Love defeats hate. Good defeats evil.

World Vision exists to demonstrate to the world that there is a different way. A way of mutual respect. A way of compassion, justice, integrity, and righteousness.

We are building bridges, not blowing up bridges.

You can look to heroes like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and see that the way of nonviolent demonstration—the way of compassion, concern, and peace—ultimately wins.

How often do you tell someone, “I’ll pray for you”? Have you noticed that once you commit to this, you start thinking a lot about the person, and you want to do more?

It happened to a church I know—with remarkable results. Lake Grove Presbyterian Church in Lake Oswego, Ore., has been a vital partner with World Vision since 1994, forging deep relationships with communities in Senegal and Zambia, sponsoring more than 500 children, and giving faithfully to World Vision relief efforts during emergencies. And it all started with prayer.

In 1994, a World Vision worker visited Lake Grove and spoke about an unreached people group in Senegal, the Wolof , and encouraged prayer for them. Pastor Bob Sanders and others at Lake Grove did so. But then they wanted to get to know the Wolof, so a team traveled to Senegal, where the people’s desperate need for clean water galvanized the congregation to raise money for wells.

More than water flowed from that first visit. A friendship developed between the congregation and 16 Senegalese villages—who later organized themselves as “Lake Grove Land”—built on frequent visits and energetic church-wide participation. Working through World Vision, the church funded education, health programs, and microenterprise initiatives for the Muslim villagers. Lake Grove showed the Wolof what Christ’s love looks like. They also teamed up with a Senegalese pastor who was planting a Christian church among the Wolof.

Fifteen years later, with Lake Grove Land achieving self-sufficiency, the church is focusing on helping communities in AIDS-ravaged Zambia. They’ve also supported relief work in Haiti as well as many previous crises. Lake Grove—where I had the privilege to speak last weekend—is a church practicing the whole gospel.

If your church wants to start somewhere with a missions focus, why not try choosing one country, one community, and just start praying? God will take it from there. And like Lake Grove, you’ll never be the same.

I still struggle to understand what kind of twisted worldview allows for the casual killing of so many innocent people for any reason. Ironically, on Tuesday, just as these attacks were occurring, I was making my final report for the President’s Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in Washington, D.C., to administration officials. In describing the NGO community I noted that “not insignificant is the reality that each year, our community of aid workers loses staff members to violence”—something very few other non-profits ever face. The next day, after the tragedy became public, President Barack Obama has also passed along his condolences to us through his senior staffers.

I returned to Seattle Wednesday and immediately walked into our weekly chapel, which had been quickly re-purposed as a prayer meeting for our staff in Pakistan and the families of our fallen coworkers. Words do not express the shock and horror of what happened. We live in perilous times, and yet all of us at World Vision believe that our work offers a powerful alternative to violence and hatred. Jesus’ simple command to “love our neighbors as ourselves,” continues to motivate us. In the end, love will win more battles than violence, and so we continue our work to love our neighbors—even those who choose to hate us.

Why did the earthquake that struck Chile early Saturday morning—500 times more powerful than Haiti’s earthquake seven weeks ago—cause so much less death and destruction? Why are the people of Haiti mourning 200,000 dead, while the death toll in Chile likely will not exceed 1,000?

The media has consulted plenty of experts to attempt to explain why. CNN featured Dr. Colin Stark of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. “Poverty is what ultimately kills most people during an earthquake,” he writes.

Dr. Stark gets it.

More than half the population in Haiti lives on less than $1 a day; the average annual income is $1,300. Nearly one-quarter of Haitian children suffer from malnutrition. Only half of Haitians over the age of 15 can read and write, and less than 30 percent reach the sixth grade.

Chile has a literacy rate greater than 95 percent among its residents over age 15. Boys and girls, on average, are in school 14 years. In addition, only 2 percent of Chile’s people are living on less than $2 a day; the average Chilean earns nearly $15,000 annually.

As I said in an op-ed earlier this week in the Seattle Times, both earthquakes have brought immeasurable tragedy in people’s lives. I visited Port-au-Prince a few days following the earthquake, and I met many individuals whose lives were changed forever. I left four days later with a mixture of sadness and anger, the latter because most of the deaths would have been prevented—if Haiti hadn’t been so very poor.

In the aftermath of these tragedies, Chile will need support, but Haiti will need intensive investment, not for months, but years.

World Vision has made a long-term commitment to walking alongside Haitians as they renew and revive their country. What is God calling you to do over the long haul for the poor?