It’s 9:00, Monday morning. I’ve just fixed my iced coffee and have settled into my prayer chair for some time with God. The sun is bathing the garden outside my window, casting beautiful shadows every where. The slight breeze sways the plumed heads of my tall grasses. This should be a morning tailor-made for prayer.
But it isn’t.
I can’t help but think of the news over the week-end, Christians being slaughtered in Pakistan, hostages being held in Nairobi. The murders that have occurred in my own community. The fact that yesterday in church I heard about human trafficking in my own mid-sized, mid-western town and I think, “How can that be?” And here I sit. Ready to commune with God and knowing that somewhere in this process, I’m going to present requests to Him that have nothing to do with the above.
How do we find the balance in it all? How do we remain compassionate about tragedies in other parts of the world when they seem more like a TV movie than reality? How do we bring our attention back to our part of the world, our families, our concerns? I’ve always been in a quandary about such things, today more so for some reason.
I doubt I will ever figure out this dilemma. The only thing I know for sure to do is to let God know that I am aware that my corner of the world is just that, a small corner. I want to make sure that I pray for world issues even though it seems overwhelming, and frankly, useless. I want to do my part to make my little corner of the world as good as I can by not allowing evil to win. For me that means, that I live a life that causes the evil to scurry away. The evil that begins in our thoughts and seeps out in so many ways.
Evil has to start somewhere. It started somewhere for the murderers, rapists, drug and human trafficker’s that cause such tragedy in the world, But evil has to stop somewhere, too. So today it stops wherever I exert any control, any responsibility.
Well, God and the morning are calling me. Maybe by the time I’m done, maybe by the time I’ve read some Scripture, I’ll come away better knowing what to do about the rest of the world. Then again, maybe not.
God bless.
