Sounds

 

The other Sunday in our worship service, we were asked to turn to someone near us and
share with them something we were thankful for that day. The person I spoke with shared that she was thankful for food on her table and the porridge she had enjoyed that morning for breakfast. I shared that, in the middle of a hot spell, we had fresh running water to drink and I was thankful for that. Also being able to use the fresh water to shower in Pure clean water to drink and to bathe in!  The other thing that this person shared with me was how thankful she was to be able to hear the birds singing and chirping away, even the noise of the pigeons.  But then she reflected on the sounds that so many people now hear; the sound of gunfire, missiles screaming overhead and the constant noise of fighter jets and drones. Sadly many people now live with those noises and would love just to hear, as the song puts it, “the sound of silence” or the joy of hearing a bird singing out its praise to the Creator God.

My thoughts went to the title of a worship song, ‘Everyone needs compassion’ and my heart was stirred with a concern for those people trapped by war, starvation and a lack of fresh water and sanitation;. My mind then went back to our thankfulness for fresh water and porridge and a prayer for some solving of these heart-rending problems.

In our prayers we must pray for world leaders that, not only do they find compassionate solutions, but more importantly that they find JESUS. With the love of Jesus flowing through their hearts, solutions will be found. We all know that a lot of leaders and politicians have self-advancement as their goal and that real and true compassion is further down the list, so our prayers need to have an urgency about them. The leaders need to realise that with great power, comes great responsibility.

Romans 12:9-10 says, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honour one another above yourselves.” We need to hold these verses in our hearts as we show compassion to those we know and to those the Lord will place before us.