Praying for God to bring our family to live on the farm where I lived as a young child seems very selfish in the light of the current destruction, human suffering and death in Japan where the tide is bringing in a harvest of dead bodies. Another tide of radiation is flowing over the land. The tide of suffering and brokenness that flows from the heart of each victim, each family member, each volunteer, each and every person that is witness to these catastrophic events, is so great that only our Heavenly Father can comprehend it's magnitude. Only he can bear the burden of so much sorrow.
Spring seems surreal suddenly; the gentle beauty of blades of fresh green grass pushing up in small tufts from beneath the brown vestiges from last autumn, the flight of the mourning doves as they flit about looking for a safe nesting spot, the crisp clean fragrance of the air as it is filled with the scent of all the things growing anew in the damp earth. Once we even woke up to a landscape sprinkled by a gentle spring rain, something that we don't usually experience in this arid climate.
Spring is happening. It is not any less real then last year or any year before.
And neither is our God. He is still as real, still as powerful, still as interested in the minute details of our everyday lives. My heart breaks for the people of Japan and all those who are suffering everywhere. I am called by God to be like him, to be caring, compassionate, and empathetic. I am called to intercede in prayer for those who suffer. How any one's heart cannot call out to the Lord on behalf of these victims is incomprehensible to me. We should never be so caught up in our own lives that we cannot "weep with those who weep, and morn with those who morn". Yet God has room for all our requests, one does not eclipse the other. Now I have more petitions to bring before the Lord, more reasons to humble myself before him and to throw myself upon his mercy and grace. Persistence in prayer is so important. It is so easy to tire when we see no immediate results. There is no fast-prayer drive up, no express prayer aisle (10 times or less!), and no one-click praying. Prayer is about relationship and knowing God. Interceding on behalf of the victims in Japan is the privilege to come into the throne room of grace. I get to humble myself before the Creator of the Universe and beg him to intercede, comfort and heal. No request is too large or too small to be of importance to our Heavenly Father.
Our answered prayers seem insignificant in the light of the great need we perceive. Yet the needs of humanity are no larger today then they were last week. It is just harder for us to ignore them when they are visible to us. Now we are seeing physical evidence of destruction, but sin is ravaging humanity every day. The urgency is ALWAYS this great even though we don't always see it.
"He did it with all his heart and prospered."
-2 Chronicles 31:21
"Whole-heartedness shows itself in perseverance; there may be failure at first, but the earnest worker will say, "It is the Lord's work, and it must be done; my Lord has bidden me do it, and in His strength I will accomplish it." Christian, art thou thus "with all thine heart" serving thy Master?"
-from the March 15th Evening reading, Morning and Evening by C.H. Spurgeon
For a recording of "If with all your hearts" by Mendelssohn (which is an adaptation of Jeremiah 29:13) click here.
I have sung this song multiple times and the promise of God's presence is a comfort and shield to me.
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