By Shane Bennett
As I sit and write this morning, southern Colorado fog limits the view from my window to a few dozen yards. Overhead, though, military jets are buzzing around in some sort of frenetic training exercise. The intermittent sound bugs me more than it should. Maybe because I can’t see them. Maybe because I’m trying to concentrate and just when I get in a groove, they light up again.
But then it occurs to me there are people for whom that sound is much more than annoyance. The ascending and descending drone of the jets predicts death and destruction, the continued upsetting of life at fundamental levels.
Somewhere in the world an airstrike means the kids can’t go to school. There’s no way to get to work, or no place to work if you can get out. The food in the cabinet will have to last, because there is no more left to buy now.
It may mean broken, twisted, still bodies. Friends, neighbors, and children who must be left where they lie for now. And for how long? Can you even imagine the agony of that calculation? How long until it’s safe to scramble out and retrieve your dead friend? When is it okay to run down the street to see what’s become of the preschool where your wife had gone to collect the kids?
Do you ever want to just turn away from such dark thoughts? I sure do. To focus on a happy, little life right here. The lure is strong and sometimes I succumb. But if you’re reading Missions Catalyst, it probably means God has done a work in you that renders you dissatisfied with that response. This is grace and a gift of inestimable value.
If you ever find yourself needing motivation to empathize with the world’s pain, some reason to re-engage, here are four things that reminds me to keep caring, and to act.
1. The present goodness of Jesus
Somehow Jesus is in the midst of the airstrike. I don’t understand it, but I can’t shake the reality that he’s there, he knows, he cares. All my sympathy and compassion look like vapor next to the real presence of the creator of the cosmos.
Jesus holds the hand of the dying, feels her final breath on his face, and mourns her slowing, fading heartbeat.
He stands with the refugee dad, despairing as the way forward is blocked and the way back simply gone.
He cries with the girl abused by the one she trusted the most.
He stands again in the furnace with faithful followers who trust him for their very lives, some living to see the next sunrise, others waking up in glory.
He is with us in the mess, bringing the very life of God to bear on his creation. Pointing us forward in hope.
2. God’s plan to make all things new
That hope toward which we move is summed up for me in two places in Revelation: John’s vision of the crowd before the throne, made up of a “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language” and Jesus’s personal pledge, “I am making everything new!”
Every springtime, every Easter, every Nowruz is practice for the ultimate renewal that awaits creation. That awaits you and me! Can you even imagine it? Is it too scary to try?
3. Our intrepid predecessors
Don Richardson recently traded earth for heaven. If anyone I personally know heard, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” it was him. I remember seeing a clip from his movie, Peace Child in which intrepid Don (sporting some wicked sideburns) and long-suffering Carol are being paddled up to a Sawi village. Say what you will, but that sort of gutsiness makes me want to pay attention, to engage, to—heaven forbid—not let Don down!
This is to say nothing of the biblical heroes of faith, the great missionaries of former centuries, and the Filipinos, Kenyans, Chinese, and South Asians whose noble sacrifice and early, painful transition to glory never made it to Western screens.
May we not sit down on the shoulders of such giants.
4. We were built for impact
We are not powerless. You and I were made to matter. Paul says we are God’s masterpiece, that “He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” I don’t know what those “good things” are for you. I often wonder about it for me! But I don’t doubt Paul’s insight nor God’s good purposes.
It’s as normal as air to doubt this, but it’s in your DNA. It’s who we are.
Granted, it may feel like there’s nothing you can do about an airstrike in Yemen or Pakistan. And by most measures, you are right. You can’t be everywhere there’s pain. Nor could you handle it.
Heck, we couldn’t handle the unseen pain present just in our row at church on an average Sunday. Most suffering will transpire apart from our attention. But we know the one who knows it all.This great God has invited us partner with him in the reconciliation of all things.
Conclusion
Let’s not turn ourselves away from the world’s pain. We have good reasons to care and to take action. You can probably think of more than these four. Please share them (and these) with your friends.
And, since perhaps the best way to join in God’s redemptive work is through prayer, I’d like to invite you to jump into this year’s Seek God for the City prayer initiative, already in process. Perspectives hall-of-famer Steve Hawthorne has put together this guided prayer effort for our neighborhoods and the nations.
» Learn more and grab the app today or search “Seek God 2019” wherever you get apps.