Source: Erich Bridges, International Mission Board, August 26, 2014
The cascade of grim global headlines overwhelmed a friend of mine recently. He announced that he couldn’t take it anymore — at least until tomorrow.
“I don’t know why I care,” he wrote. “I don’t know why I bother. I check the news. Bad. All bad. Unless the news is horrible, it’s bad. Why care? Why bother? Why not just play ‘Angry Birds’ and pretend it doesn’t affect me? It sounds easier.”
Despite his frustration and discouragement, I know he won’t stop reading, watching, caring, and praying. He’s an intelligent and compassionate young man, for one thing. He’s concerned about world affairs. He makes a point of keeping up with what’s happening and tries to understand it.
Another young person I know returned recently from a youth mission trip to Amsterdam, the Dutch capital. She and the group arrived there the same week in July that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew. Two-thirds of the passengers were Dutch. People on the streets of Amsterdam were just beginning to experience the shock of the tragedy as the youth team walked through the city and distributed more than 6,000 copies of the Gospel of John.
Some people they encountered rejected the small gifts of truth. But many accepted it — many more than the Amsterdam-based Christian worker helping the young people expected — and they began reading it. Perhaps they were looking for something to hold onto, something to hope in.
» Read also these articles about our world: World’s Top Church-Destroying Countries (Christianity Today) and a report from InContext Ministries about how the influence of various countries is viewed, positively or negatively, by the rest of the world. And see this great, concise piece from Asia Harvest, God’s Solution to Terrorism. Part one addresses the “real cause of global terrorism.” Look for part two in next month’s Asia Harvest newsletter.