The business of turning mourning into dancing

“So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’" – Gen. 18:12

“Now Sarah said, ‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.’" – Gen. 21:6

I was reading these passages a week or so ago and was struck by the irony that Sarah scoffingly laughed at the suggestion that she would bear a child in her old age, when announced by the divine visitors that came to see she and her husband Abraham. Then a couple of chapters later in Genesis, when Sarah indeed does bear a child; she says that God has brought laughter to her – and others will laugh with her in the great joy of her having bourn a child.

I don’t know if Sarah hearkened back to that first scoffing laugh as she invited her friends to laugh with joy with her. But the irony of the situation must not have been lost on her because the meaning of Isaac is “to laugh” or “he laughs.”

Recently World Vision went into the camps where they work (this refugee “city” is divided into distinct, geographically delineated camps – hence the nutrition clinic in Camp 3) and asked what their prayer concerns were. Here is what the refugees came up with:

It strikes me that these concerns show the heart of the Rohingya people. The prayers of a mother for her child to have a good school to go to aren’t foreign to us. The entreaty that God would allow them to return to Burma as citizens is one with which not many of us can identify (with our passports in hand).

The joy of a child in one of the Nutrition clinics

I have taken to praying that the Lord will create a future with hope for the Rohingya (from Jer. 29:11). He has done this before. In the book of Esther we read that God turned the Jewish people’s calamitous situation into a cause for celebration when it speaks of: “…the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday….” This is part of the business of God – turning mourning into dancing and clothing the downtrodden with joy (Ps 30:11).

So I have begun to envision the time when, like Sarah of old, the Rohingya will invite people to laugh in joy with them as they experience the future God desires for them. It is a difficult vision for me to grasp at this point. But I yearn for it in the faith that God will create a future with hope for this people.

Thanks for praying with the Rohingya (and their specific prayer concerns) and for them!

Hope for the vulnerable and the forgotten.

We are thrilled to be a part of an organization that is/has been responding to this type of devastating situation where people struggle to have the resiliency to face such challenges.

17 ¶  The flood continued forty days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth.

18  The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters.

19  The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered;

20  the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.

21 ¶  And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all human beings;

I read these verses from Genesis 6 the other day. For whatever reason they hit me in such a strong way – much more powerfully than ever before. I don’t really like being all alone in a boat in the middle of a lake, given that I am not a great swimmer. So I can’t imagine being on the ark, seeing absolutely nothing under the heavens but water as far as the eye can see. I would think that there must have been moments of doubt for Noah as he spent day after day in the rain, seeing the waters rise around him until he could see nothing but those waters.

Maybe this hit me so much harder because of the apocalyptic pictures and video that we have been seeing from around our world as flooding devastates country after country and people after people. Vietnam. Myanmar. France. The Philippines. The US. Indonesia. And the list could go on. This flooding often seems to be of Biblical proportions. And this flooding leaves a trail of death, destruction and deficiency of the basics needed for life in its wake.

 

No doubt you have heard about the tsunami that has destroyed so much infrastructure and so many lives on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Medair has sent out an Emergency Response Team to Sulawesi. You can see more (and a short video) about their deployment here: www.medair.org/tsunami/.

Medair also reached Luzon in the Philippines within 24 hours of Super Typhoon Mangkhut wreaking havoc on the lives of people there. An Emergency Response team went there as well. 3 days after their arrival, the team did their first emergency distribution: www.medair.org/stories/reaching-remote-communities-philippines/.

And Medair has also been assisting in the international response to the Ebola crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is largely passing under the radar of many of us. Here you can read globally about how Medair is working in very difficult conditions to fence in the Ebola epidemic so that it doesn’t ravage vast tracts of Congo and move into neighboring countries.

We know that the vulnerable, and sometimes forgotten, people in these places face some of the same despair that I suspect Noah must have struggled with as he looked out of the ark’s window and saw nothing but water all around him. Christine & I are thankful to be a part of an organization that is responding in Christ’s love to give hope to these vulnerable people for whom an emergency distribution can be the difference between life and death, or where people might die of a horrible hemorrhagic disease if Medair didn’t help to fence it in!  Would you please pray for strength for these teams ministering in these places – and for hope for those people whom they serve!