A Time to Pray

While The Football Game was playing in our house last night I was crying in the living room. 

I was (as is typical) not paying attention to the game. Football bores me so much that it, and not an overload of delicious turkey, are often why I fall asleep on Thanksgiving. I didn't even know it was our Chiefs who were playing until a couple hours before. So I was on the couch, trying to escape the thundering roars of the announcers and my own husband.

I came across a story here and the title caught my eye. I suppose that is the point right? So I clicked. It is a heartbreaking and tear-inducing tale of woe that seems worth so much more attention than a couple of small paragraphs in the middle of a internet news copy. Two mothers, sisters, whose children were torn from their arms as the typhoon waters surged around them. One of the women was interviewed briefly and I can't help but wonder if the reporter felt what I felt watching her try to speak, or if it was just a matter of getting a good story for him. I hope not, but I am not naive. 

The woman on the video, and who was mentioned, lost her two small boys, literally- "Where are they she wonders? Are dogs eating them?" and "How can I go on? I want to kill myself.I want to jump off that building over there" She struggles to even speak and I can't imagine that kind of grief. 

Thirteen hours behind, and 8,000 miles away, no amount of Red Cross money, canned food, or international aid is going to rescue that kind of misery and hopelessness. And why do I feel the urgency of her words the way I do? Does anyone else? Or will the world pass over the few lines of her sorrow with a hurried glance and off to something not quite so depressing? 

Ecclesiastes 3:1-4

There is a time for everything,

    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

     a time to be born and a time to die,

    a time to plant and a time to uproot,

     a time to kill and a time to heal,

    a time to tear down and a time to build,

    a time to weep and a time to laugh.

It is a hard truth of life that there is grief and sadness. Sin has made God's beautiful creation a heart- wrenching beast of misery sometimes. 

But there is one thing I can do, and that is: I can pray for her. Because my God is not a heartless statue that does not love to help those who ache. He is not only for Americans or white people or good people or poor people. He is here and He is there. He goes where I cannot. I don't want her to kill herself, and neither does He. So I will pray fervently that He will comfort her, heal her, help her find her children alive or give her answers and a peace that surpasses all understanding. And most of all, that she would find in Him her solace her shelter,her salvation, and her joy. He loves her. And in Him, I can love her too. I hope, not flippantly like with the throwing of a coin into a fountain, but with a real, expectant hope that she will feel the power of the Holy Spirit this week. Will you please join with me in blessing this woman and her sister, and all the people of that region this week?