Remembering this Bleeding World

“Would you please pass the potatoes?”

Your friend complies, staring hungrily as the bowl of creamy potatoes leaves his hands.

From his chair across the table, he watches you eat. First the mashed potatoes. Then the croissant. Then the delicately marinated steak. Finally, he watches, puzzled, as you scrape the green beans around on your plate. Closing your eyes and holding your nose, you manage to stuff a couple of the green beans down.

It’s not that your friend isn’t hungry. He wants to eat. Only, he can’t, because he is without food.

About 24,000 people die of hunger-related problems each day. The problem feels distant, perhaps because of the thousands of miles stretching between our dinner tables and the slums of Haiti or the tsunami swept villages of Myanmar, but the problem is no less for the distance.

Today is the date of the fast, initiated by Compassion International, to bring attention to the global food crisis. The fast is meant to also be an encouragement to those Christians suffering from the food crisis, letting them know that their siblings in America are lifting them up in prayer. Reading about this fast, I am struck by two realizations:

One, as an American Christian, I’m so disconnected from the daily difficulties my brothers and sisters in Christ face across the world. While my parents have always tried to make us kids understand that picky eating is a form of selfishness, I do have the luxury of choosing what I want for lunch from a full kitchen cabinet. I’m inconvenienced if I’m craving tuna salad and can’t find any in the kitchen. Others count themselves blessed to have a bowl of rice. Even beyond food, I don’t understand other very real threats—such as persecution and imprisonment for my faith. Those things are incomprehensible.

Two, I realize how little I do to help. E-mail newsletters arrive in my inbox nearly every day, keeping me up to date on Gospel work in India, needs in Myanmar, and a note from a friend reminds me of world hunger. But what do I do?

Of course, if one of those starving people were sitting at my dinner table, I’d remember to feed them, right? I couldn’t just let them miserably watch me eat, could I? Of course, I’d pass them a plate and pile the mashed potatoes high.

If so, why do I allow a few longitude lines on a map stop me from helping them now? Because unless a starving person is sitting across the table from me, I am prone to forget starvation exists.

Hebrews 13:3 says “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” That verse was written for people like me, saying, “Remember! Don’t forget those people, even if you don’t see them on a daily basis. Remember their problems. Share in their sufferings!”

I’m reminded of what Rich Mullins once wrote: “…[T]he other side of the world is not so far away. The distance just dissolves into the love.” So let us remember. Prayer is meaningful and donations can provide aid, when compassion bridges the distance for us to remember to love.

Presumptuous Prayers?

The Practice of Godliness, by Jerry Bridges, is by far the most
deeply provoking and convicting book that I've read in a long time. In this short passage on fearing God, Bridges provides some solid food for thought about prayer.

"One of the more serious sins of Christians today may well be the almost flippant familiarity with which we often address God in prayer. None of the godly men of the Bible ever adopted this casual manner we often do. They always addressed God with reverence. The same writer who tells us that we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place, the throne room of God, also tells us that we should worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, "for our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 10:19 and 12:28-29).

There is a healthy tension in the godly person's heart between the reverential awe of God in his glory and the childlike confidence in God as heavenly Father. Without this tension, a Christian's filial confidence can easily degenerate into presumption.

In our day we must begin to recover a sense of awe and profound reverence for God. We must begin to view him once again in the infinite majesty that alone belongs to him who is the Creator and Supreme Ruler of the entire universe. There is an infinite gap in worth and dignity between God the Creator and man the creature, even though man has been created in the image of God. The fear of God is a heartfelt recognition of this gap-- not a put-down of man, but an exaltation of God."

(The Practice of Godliness, Jerry Bridges, page 27)

The God I Love

The Pool of Bethesda...a place of hope, where Jesus healed many who were sick and crippled. In Joni Eareckson Tada's book, The God I Love, she describes a trip with her husband to that pool. For many years, she had dreamed of traveling to see this very pool. She also petitioned God for many years to heal her paralysis inflicted body. But God had other ideas for her life.

"I leaned on my arm against the guardrail. I whispered, "And now...after thirty years...I'm here...I made it. Jesus didn't pass me by. He didn't overlook me. He came my way and answered my prayer - He said no.

"Lord, your no answer to physical healing meant yes to a deeper healing - a better one. Your answer has bound me to other believers and taught me so much about myself. It's purged sin from my life, it's strengthened my commitment to you, forced me to depend on your grace. Your wiser, deeper answer has stretched my hope, refined my faith, and helped me to know you better. And you are good. You are so good."

Reading about Joni Earekson Tada's saga has greatly encouraged and inspired me. While I'm not wheelchair-bound, I do suffer from a chronic illness that robs me of energy and many physical activities. Because of this, I am often pleading with God to remove this illness from me and make me well. So far, He has yet to do that. I have two ways I can react to His reply: I can grow bitter and angry towards God and become upset that He hasn't healed me or I can look at it the way Joni does. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, I can clearly see that God is healing me in various ways. Sure, my healing may not come in a physical form but in a spiritual sense.

In reality, Joni's principle is true for all of us. Most of you may not suffer from a chronic illness or be paralyzed, but all of us have petitions we send upward to the throne of God. Sometimes God chooses to answer those, sometimes He doesn't. Oftentimes we relate an answer to prayer with something happening in the physical realm, but God's healing is often unseen by our natural eye and sensed only by our spirit. Psalm 66:20 says,

"Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me!"

God knows exactly what we need to live. He knows the number of the hairs on our heads, He calls the sparrows by name, and His love for us is as wide as the sky and as deep as the oceans. The next time you offer a prayer up to Heaven and things aren't going according to your prayer or your plan, I challenge you to look deeper and see if God is doing something bigger and greater in your heart.