Tiny Troubles

Some say our world will end in conflagration – perhaps nuclear. Others predict a watery death as the polar icecaps melt.  Other plausible theories include over-population and starvation.  A poet said the world would not end with a bang, but a whimper. (T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”)  But in the scary warnings of “invisible” enemies threatening our health, how much is made of the visible persecution of Christians in Sudan and the Middle East – today? 

Today, I am not so sure it’s the big stuff that will annihilate us. Stuff we can’t see may be fixing to do us in.  Europe – and maybe the USA – is facing an epidemic of a new strain of e-coli, and bedbugs have resurged, also immune to formerly successful treatments.  And our careless habits, the most prevalent purveyor.  

How would that warning look on billboards across the nation?  “Repent! A microscopic bug is gonna get you!”  Hardly an admonition that would turn any one to seek God. 

Yet, reading today’s headlines I remembered a lesson I prepared years ago for a Bible study on Isaiah. Preparing background for what happened to the Assyrian army encamped outside Jerusalem I cited some info from National Geographic's July '94 issue, which devoted quite a chilling spread to "viruses:"  

  . . . [M]inuscule, mysterious, microscopic genetic menaces that can invade most living things with deadly consequences. AIDS, polio, Lassa fever, influenza and the cold are potential killers of phenomenal ability. Each begins beyond the ability of the human eye to discern, and ends with consequences that are tragic to behold.  

           

Could such a virus have swept through the Assyrian army encamped outside Jerusalem? We are not told HOW, but in Isaiah 37:36, the angel of the Lord moved through the Assyrian army and slew 185,000 soldiers (that is roughly 5 times the population of Annapolis, Maryland). 

           

Herodotus records an Assyrian defeat occasioned by a plague of mice, which consumed the equipment of the army and left them helpless before their enemies. Such rodents are notorious carriers of disease and plague.

We don't know if this is what happened, but savor the humor and irony if the Lord chose to defeat the bellicose, belligerent Assyrians by letting a few mice loose among their soldiers! What a rebuke! They boasted of their "war machine" that overturned the gods of the nations in the Mesopotamia, and God took them with an invisible killer carried by furry critters. Could it be? Angels unleashing mice to conquer those who shake their fists at heaven!  

           

Of all the conquests that Sennacherib took pains to detail in his "inscriptions," there is no account of his ever conquering Jerusalem - only that he received King Hezekiah's tribute by messenger in Nineveh.

I don’t know how the world as we know it might end. For too many today it will end violently – painfully – horribly, slaughtered by their fellow men and women who hate them.   May God protect us, not only from the invisible insurgents who take our health, but from the unseen and real enemy of God who means to destroy us. 

Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.   But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. . . (1 Peter 5:8-11)

 

  

Praying for Haiti

Recently I wondered how I could pray some of the imprecations David did in Psalms – like “Knock out all their teeth, Lord!” ( Psalm 3:7 – my paraphrase ) I can pray it wholeheartedly today. I listened as a young woman in the Frontline interview about Haiti hung her head and said, “All I have left is my faith.”(Frontline: The Battle for Haiti http://tinyurl.com/4btedoy)

Because of how her country was before the earthquake, and then the earthquake, she and her countrymen have lived for over a year in conditions Americans, even our poorest, do not. I thought her comments would describe this grief; they covered far more.

When the quake leveled this island’s buildings, it also opened the gated in prisons and jails, and terrible folks were unleashed. They now control the population – doing unspeakable things to women and children.

The woman who spoke was composed; as I listened, I was not. Her suffering reminded me of women who went through the Babylonian siege and then captivity. (2 Chronicles 29:3-11) It’s one thing to read history – it’s another to see it played out in front of you as current events– the human heart really is capable of anything. (Jeremiah 17:9-10)

The church in Haiti needs help – even from faint-hearted folks like me. Now is not the time for debating or discussing the mustard seed – plant it! James said to a group of Christians about to live through severe trials:

“You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove . . . (James 2:14-20 The Message)

God let my light shine – for I have much and have been spared more.

Isaiah told King Ahaz:

“If you don't take your stand in faith, you won't have a leg to stand on."(Isaiah 7:9 The Message)

Let me pray like good works don’t matter, and give in the same manner Christ has given me!

And the prophet Isaiah also told those who would lose everything:

[God] is the stability of your times – a wealth of wisdom, salvation and knowledge: The fear of the Lord is His treasure.” (Isaiah 33:6)

God, hear my prayer:

Arise, O LORD!
Deliver [Haiti], O my God!
Strike all [her] enemies on the jaw;
break the teeth of the wicked.
From the LORD comes deliverance.
May your blessing be on your people. ( Psalm 3:7-8)

The photos

It’s the pictures of the children . . . the babies and toddlers who were saved, and the ones who did not . . . that testify to the depth of the horror of the 2010 Haitian earthquake. Thank God or the photographers who captured the grief, the sorrow, the joy – What was so important before the quake, how important is it today?