If My People Will Pray

About 6,000 people were plucked out of the Mediterranean sea over the weekend, a record number that broke the previous weekend’s record.

Another new record was set in July, with 107,500 refugees crossing the European Union’s borders during that month.

For these people, Europe symbolises hope, a new life away from the terror of war, oppression and persecution that is the reality of life in the countries from which they have fled.

Pictures bombard us in the media  – pictures of desperate fathers holding their exhausted children, of women collapsed on the deck of a rescue boat, of hundreds packed like sardines onto floating tin cans by inhumane people traffickers. The list goes on.

These people have no idea that they are breaking records, adding to already swamped statistics. They are simply people fleeing unspeakable terrors, wanting just a taste of what we in the West take for granted – freedom, life and hope for the future.

What is our response? Do we, like so many in Europe, wish they would just turn around and go back to where they came from? Do we put their plight in the “too hard” basket? Do we avoid reading about it or listening to the news, just in case their plight might convict our hearts to rise out of our comfort zones and respond to their needs.

What is our response? Do we weep, as surely their Heavenly Father weeps, for these lost souls? Do our hearts cry out to Heaven on their behalf, pleading with the Father to intervene and make Himself known to them, that they may be “…no longer strangers and aliens, but … citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God” Ephesian 2 vs 19.

Our most powerful tool of response to this crisis is prayer. If we, God’s people would hear the call to pray, to plead for the lost, to call out for the nations of this world, we may yet live to see change happen, and hope return to a world that needs a Saviour now more than ever.

Psalm 2 vs 8: “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.”

Picture source: http://www.aljazeera.com/news