Arab Spring: A work in progress

Tuesday 17 December marked three years since Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire and sparked a wave of uprisings throughout the Arab world. Today, Libya’s oil is in the hands of militias, Egypt’s military tightens its hold on power, and Syria is churning out refugees from its brutal civil war.

Tunisia appears to be the last Arab Spring country to have a shot at completing a transition to democracy following last ditch negotiations between secularists and Islamists. But even that is shaky. Fresh elections will be held in 2014, after the ruling Islamic party and the opposition agreed on a transitional government to carry the nation through to elections.

There is great disappointment, and even fear, as the world watches the apparent disintegration of these nations that started a shaky journey to change. For the millions in each of these Arab nations life only seems to have got harder, and uncertainty the order of their day.

At the time of these revolutions some of God’s people had a sense that God was at work in shaking the nations. In the midst of crisis God has called his Church to extend the borders of the tent, lengthen the ropes and strengthen the pegs. He has called us to look and see the new thing that he is doing in our day, something we would not believe even if he told us.

As nations remember the hopes that marked the start of the revolutions, pray for God’s people inside Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Bahrain, to hold fast to the hope that God is at work. Pray that the hand of evil will be stopped and God will continue the work he has begun these three years ago.