Keep praying

The things I feel grateful for lately seem so frivolous compared to the basic freedoms of the people in the middle east.  While Christians in the middle east are being systemically killed, men, women and children, in a horrific genocide I feel pathetically helpless and frozen, wondering what will our government do?  Just today I saw a news headline regarding the President having okayed humanitarian air drops.  That’s all fine and good, and yes, we have to do something ….I realize are military was just pulled out of that area and all hell broke loose.  Who on this planet is going to return there and help them?  I know this has been going on for literally centuries, back and forth, waging war against one another. .I just pray and pray and pray for those that are truly innocent and good people.  What horrible persecution of Christians, penalty of which is torture and death, even of the smallest child.  God please come to their rescue.  I have to believe if the scriptures were to be written today, these stories would be included because they are so monumental.  Could a new Moses arise to set these people free?  Send them someone Lord.

Meanwhile we are moving through our daily lives with an enormous amount of free will, many choices and freedoms that I think we take all too much for granted.  When I think about how I, how we, can just go about our way each day, grocery shopping, stopping into the church, reading our bible, or proclaiming outright on social media snippets of scripture, or saying God’s name aloud……I realize how free we are.  Each morning I arise to this freedom, with hardly a fear in my heart for anything major.  Yes, we have the unexpected things, tragedies, accidents, heartaches and heartbreaks, which are part and parcel of every one’s life.  But this country, our country,……think how we can count our blessings, in contrast to the larger world.

So when we quibble and complain and whine about every last little thing…..let’s not!  Let’s instead put in our mind’s eye the image of those families across the globe being so traumatized and stripped of any of life’s comforts and beauty; families torn apart, being cruelly treated, tortured, killed for their very existence, because they are a different culture, live in a conflicted area, or are Christian; Christian….something we take for granted here.  When we are persecuted or believe to be targeted as Christians, through health care reform, or by atheists or secular society’s prevailing viewpoint and pressure,  we are still so much more free than the person on the next continent. 

I know it is not perfect for every one, I know some people are born into a poverty or abuse that doesn’t end…but I know, we aren’t kicking the underdog either…and if identified, these people can be helped, help is there for them, no matter what race, religion or creed they profess.

So, my whiny post about summer going too quickly, not being hot and humid enough, and how horrid the last winter was, and how we need more nice weather to make up for it…….and how I really don’t want to start school too soon…..It is all turned upside down on its head.   The freedom to even home school, and hold off and not even start until say October if I want….is a generous freedom.   I am so much in control.  There are laws that protect my interests in ways that would seem very indulging to others’ feeble freedoms in other countries.

Grateful doesn’t even describe it.  Indebted to how God has put me and those I love on this timeline in this era and place….is forever written on my heart, and yet my heart weeps a great pain and sadness for those others that find themselves in places other than this land of the free, home of the brave.  May God stop the horror in those places.  May God heal the people, his people, every where.  May God make Himself truly apparent and reveal His greatness and send a miracle.

A miracle is what is needed.  And God can supply it.

Keep praying.