Marketplace Monastics

We are praying together for those too weakened, too faint, to pray for themselves.  Perhaps they have been too long deceived.  Perhaps they are too full of bitterness or self-pity; it doesn’t matter how they ended up beaten and robbed and left for dead.  It doesn’t matter how many have passed by on the other side of the road; we are here now.

Lord God!  Almighty God!  Maker of heaven and earth … Maker of us and of those we love and those for whom we care deeply … We have found You in the Sanctuary which is Christ Jesus.  We pray today, we lift up these souls,  _______________________________ , these wounded and Desperate Little Friends, and we ask that You would reach them as You have us, heal them, may refreshing come to them, that they will come up out of every wilderness, “leaning on the Beloved.”  If  You have made them thirsty or watched them slip into despair, so bring them up, O God, into fullness and life and the knowledge of Your Son.  May they come to drink deeply of the Water of Life, and us with them, ever more deeply.  Amen.

                We will begin, not with Psalm 1, but with Psalm 63, one of the many that give us a clear understanding of why we are here and why we are praying for those too paralyzed to pray for themselves.  Think of someone, one whose condition breaks your heart, the mention of whose name grips your soul, or think of the many you know, the too many hurting too desperately, and let’s pray together.

            Psalm 63 speaks of the soul’s thirst for God, of the weak and fainting condition we all know when we have wandered a little too far from Him or otherwise found ourselves in a wilderness, almost too lifeless to cry out for help.

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
    my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
    as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

            Not all of our Desperate Little Friends appear to be desperate.  Some are still holding it together; some aren’t. Either way, this is the antidote, and this we know.  The help we have found and the help they need is in the Presence of the Lord.

² So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
    beholding your power and glory.

³ Because your steadfast love is better than life,
    my lips will praise you.
⁴ So I will bless you as long as I live;
    in your name I will lift up my hands.

            The thirsty souls, the fainting life, in a dry and weary land. 

            The married couples, young but shriveled and old in their romance, dying, as it were, on the vine.

            The young people, teenagers, with dark circles under their eyes, wearied of life before they have begun to live it.

            The little ones, already trusting more in manipulation than in the love and wisdom of their parents.

            Other friends, older friends, lonely, forsaken, and emotionally removed from any help that might effect a change.

            But in the sanctuary, if they could reach it, there is God, and His lovingkindness is better than life.  If they cannot or will not come, our lips will praise and pray, and their ears will hear.  A little bird will carry the matter. (Ecclesiastes 10:20). When we speak, the Word of the Lord will not return void to Him.  (Isaiah 55:11). It doesn’t!  It won’t!  And the depths of our caring will touch more than the hem of His garment … it will touch His heart.

Rehydrating a cholera patient

Center for Disease Control, CDC, public domain, official government duties,

It’s happening!  I love it when a plan comes together!

Driving around yesterday, running a few errands, not less than three times did I happen upon someone, one tired looking older man and two teenagers to be precise, and I found my soul drawn to them in a warm and specific compassion.  I could not begin to say how many people I saw here and there, but those three drew my attention and a significant, unmistakable kindling of love toward them, strangers though they were.

Most of us have experienced something like that at the sight of a bent old woman, pushing a cart with all her earthly belongings in it, or a young person, perhaps tatted and pierced and Goth-ed beyond the pale of any healthy adorning.  Obviously we aren’t speaking of generational bias but of those instances where through poverty, loneliness, or cultural extremes, we hear a cry for help.

Yesterday seemed to me a resurgence of compassion as I drove along, and my heart was flooded with love for those three.  My intercessions were spontaneous and sincere, deep and authentic, and my soul rejoiced even while it ached for my three new, unnamed, D.L.F.s.

These ten days of praying more fervently for those I love has increased love!  I must tell you, and I’m sure you will know just what I mean, the love I felt for those three was not completely comfortable.  It wasn’t warm/fuzzy.  There was a grief in those brief moments of loving and caring, there was a desperation in my heart as I lifted them up to the Lord’s compassion, and no small amount of pain.  I can feel it now as I recount those moments to you.

Will I put them on my list?  Probably not, but sometimes I do remember and mention all those I’ve prayed for en route in the past.  Fortunately, the Lord knew their names then and sees them now, hundreds of men, women, and children over the years.  At times I ask Him to remember them and to bless and keep them … as if He could forget!

I mentioned that I am about to start again, praying through the Psalms and into Isaiah and perhaps beyond for my Desperate Little Friends.  I saw last time that certain Scriptures stirred my heart on behalf of nations, particularly my own, and certainly for various circumstances and people groups … I have a heart for those imprisoned, separated from the love they need and the families that need them, some justly and some unjustly convicted.  My heart yearns, too, to see young men begin to fight the real battles of their age, men and boys who will fight dragons and demons all day long on video games while their hearts and their families suffer defeat.  Those compassions have already been set ablaze!

What stirs your heart to prayerful action? Share that with us today, if you will.  Have you begun to care more deeply, and have you noticed a change?

The Good Samaritan, Aime’ Morot, 

Wikipedia, by permission, death of the artist (1913)

I wrote once of a realization that mattered to me, that if ever I wished I could have been with Jesus in Gethsemane on that night of His suffering, if ever I might have yearned to have been there, stayed awake with Him, watched with Him and prayed as He desired the disciples to do, it isn’t too late!  He prays on!  He prays for me and for you and for those whose desperations have kindled something in our hearts.  We do care … we said that from the beginning!  In His caring, Jesus prays on, and so shall we, and not alone but with Him!  He prays on!

Therefore He is able to save completely those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to intercede for them. (Hebrews 7:25, The Berean Study Bible)

In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words…(Romans 8:26, NASB)

            See His suffering!  He prays with groans that “cannot be uttered.”  This isn’t just praying in the Spirit; this is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, praying, and we can enter in.  Dare we say it?  We have been invited and even admonished to enter in.

Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. 

(Galatians 6:2, KJV)

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.  (Hebrews 4:16, KJV)

Where we have been unable to summon up a single tear, the decision to pray, to join the Lord in His caring, has warmed our hearts and kindled our compassions.

Here is an invitation: my sister and I set out to pray for someone through the Psalms, someone we have known and loved but whose life seemed stagnant and desperately oppressed.  It took a while, since there are 150 of them, and some Psalms we had to tackle for a few days running because of their length, but we did it.  Change happened, significantly, but we have wanted to go through them again, for the battle grew larger in places instead of smaller, and others came into our prayers, others suffering similarly.

Tomorrow, a sample of what that kind of intercession looks like.  For sure, it looks like dedication and depth of caring, but you might wish to join us.  Would you like to travel with us through the Psalms, as David and others plead with God for their own souls and for deliverance from the works and the oppressions of the “wicked”?  There is plenty of wickedness at work in our land and even in our families in this hour, spiritual enemies and powers of darkness, as Paul explained to the Ephesians.  Perhaps we will pray through the book of Isaiah where God answers the cries of the wounded and the desperate and the lonely and the forgotten of this world.

Would you like to bring some of your Dear and Desperate Little Friends before the Throne of Grace where prayers and groaning continue, remarkably?  To me, perhaps to you, it is praying with Jesus where He is praying now, staying awake as He asked, recognizing that even in glory, He prays on!

Heinrich Hofmann, 1886, Christ in Gethsemane

Wikipedia, by permission, public domain

Distractions.  Dissipations. I am considering them, and not for the first time.

As I sat before the Lord one day last week, realizing as I mentioned that I had blown three or four hours given to me through a canceled appointment that morning, I counted at least five “starts” from my chair in the first three minutes.  I wasn’t making a careful count, because that would have been a distraction in itself, but easily five in three.  Five minutes later, at least four or five more occurred until I began to settle down a little, by the sheer force of not jumping up every time I wanted to.

Yes.  Wanted to. I could tell you what a few of those little impetuous impulses were, but much as I want to stay transparent before you, they were sillyand overtly interruptive.  A couple of them, just to illustrate: I had to sit on my hands to keep from moving some picture frames from one side of the room to the other. Oddly enough, probably because I beat that one down and because it wasn’t critical in the first place, they are still right where they were.  Must not have been as important as it felt at the moment … the moment I was supposed to be spending with the Lord, worshiping and praying.

Is this ringing any bells?

I don’t know how many times I almost got up and left the room to see if I had put something in my “cart” online that I wanted to purchase.  (Now I’m red in the face!)  If I had succumbed, there is a great chance I never would have returned.  I would like to say – and of course, did tell myself – “I’ll be right back!” – but I know better.  Maybe I would have returned.  Maybe. My track record is NOT GREAT once I get up and leave.

So, I stayed.  I quieted my soul.  What worked in the end, as always, was when I opened my mouth and began to speak.  I spoke what I came for, my worship and my prayers.  No bells, no whistles, no startling revelations, no goose bumps.  Along with the tears we may shed for others down the road, it must be that to show up and to stay in prayer with what time and compassion we have is bedrock.  Faith works through love, and much as I think it sounds a bit redundant, at least I loved the Lord and loved the person for whom I prayed enough to … well, to ask, to stay and to pray for good things for them instead of new address labels for me, free delivery with minimum purchase.

Oh, Lord … no kidding!  The flesh profits us NOTHING!  (John 6:63). Thank You, thank You, thank You, that we do have life in Your Spirit.  Apart from You, we are nothing but a shell with self-referential tendencies.  Those are present even with You, Lord, as well You know, and I’m sorry for those times when I so prefer not to live in that Life You have given, but Oh!, You are faithful, wooing me away from emptiness, drawing near the moment I turn my heart and my steps toward You, and because I may, I do, and that River of Life flows on, to me and even through me.  But best of all, in the Secret Place, You are there, and in You there are pleasures and compassions, both; there are tears that need to be shed, determinations that need to be made and kept, and there is fulness of joy.

L’Ennui

La Touche, 1893, by Permission, Wikipedia

Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered,
And let those who hate Him flee before Him.
As smoke is driven away, so drive them away;
As wax melts before the fire,
So let the wicked perish before God.
 But let the righteous be glad; let them exult before God;
Yes, let them rejoice with gladness. Psalm 68:1-3, NASB

            After yesterday, after the unpleasant discovery that I had given over three or four good hours to … nothingness … I did get up from here, from my desk, and went away to spend what time I could with the Lord.

            It was already late afternoon, and I hadn’t more than an hour or so at hand, but I was glad to have it and glad to spend it; I was glad for that personal and graphic reminder that, for most of us, we CAN if we WILL.  At least, for me.

            Caring deeply is another matter in many ways; you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.  You can, however, as a dear friend once taught me and has since reminded me, you can salt his oats.  That’s what happens when we bring ourselves before God and come with the needs of those we love; when we decide to care.  The tribulation, the despair, the unbelief, the woundedness of those given into our spiritual keeping is, as we have seen and said, like waters over our head, and yet there has been a drought of tears. 

            We aren’t trying to cry, we are here to care as deeply as we can, even to tears.

            In the Presence of the Lord, if we will come, if we will stay, if we are willing to bear the burden He places upon us, we will weep His tears when they need to flow and drop into the earth.  When the groanings He groans by the Holy Spirit need a voice on this planet, in His Presence we will moan in agony if we must, but, let us be assured …

He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.  Psalm 126:6, KJV

Ever wonder, “Who goes forth weeping when it’s time to plant fields?  Maybe someone with no seed to plant, but the one with a bag full of precious seed, and it would be precious if it were next year’s harvest and food for the table, why does he weep?  It is Spring, it is time to be glad and be full of hope!”  Good seed planted will yield a harvest, and good seed is costly, as are good tears.  We weep for those whose tears have ceased to flow.

O God, when You went forth before Your people,
When You marched through the wilderness, Selah.
The earth quaked;
The heavens also dropped rain at the presence of God;
Sinai itself quaked at the presence of God, the God of Israel.
You shed abroad a plentiful rain, O God;
You confirmed Your inheritance when it was parched.
Your creatures settled in it;
You provided in Your goodness for the poor, O God.

            Still Psalm 68, (verses 7-10, NASB)!   Our God provides in His goodness for the poor, and most assuredly for the oppressed, the downtrodden, those in prison, those sick and destitute and naked and wounded and forgotten.  We visit them, we feed and clothe them … and we pray, even unto tears if the Lord drops them down, until they are able to stand and rejoice with us, and settle into the goodness God has provided.

            We said a few days ago that it is all too easy to slip into a place where the enormity of the need can become for us an excuse not to pray, not to care, and certainly not to care until it hurts.  Too many poor, and as Jesus said, we will always have them with us, all too deeply wounded … the waters have gone over our heads!

            We worship Jesus, and we bring the poor and the spiritually wounded before Him, for He is their help, as He is ours.  Consider, and choose one D.L.F. (Desperate Little Friend,) someone for whom no one else might be weeping, and pray with me today …

Answer me, O Lord, for Your lovingkindness is good (I bring with me my dear and wounded friend;)
According to the greatness of Your compassion, turn to me, (turn to them,)  And do not hide Your face from Your servant (for I care about those You love, just as You care about me,)
For I am in (They are in deepest distress); answer me quickly.
 Oh draw near to my soul (and to theirs) and redeem (us);
Ransom (them as you have ransomed) me because of (our) enemies!
  You know my (their) reproach and my (their) shame and my (their) dishonor, (and it grieves as if it were my own;)
All my (their) adversaries are ^[l]before You.

(Their) reproach has broken my heart, and I am so sick (at heart for their sake.)
(They) looked for sympathy, but there was none,
And for comforters, but I (they) found none.

(But here am I, Lord, and I care, and I will pray for them with You and watch for Your deliverance, Your mercy, and Your strong help on their behalf.)

            Oh God, arise, let Your enemies be scattered, let those that hate You and hate my friend flee before You!  Drive them away, that we may exult and rejoice together before You!

Psalm 69:16-20, and Psalm 68:1-3, NASB

            If we keep caring like this, we will water the earth, and perhaps the Lord’s feet, with our tears.

Starving Ebensee prisoners, Ebensee Concentration Camp, Austria, liberated by U.S. 80th Division

Photo taken May 7, 1945 by Lt. Arnold Samuelson

As a work of the U.S. Federal Government, the work is in the public domain.

When our own sufferings rise to our necks, or begin to constrict our hearts, it makes an indescribable difference to know that others have brought their prayers before God on our behalf.  I have friends, I think I have many friends, who have and will pray for me; I have probably very few who would pray until my need brought them to tears.

Do I need their tears?  No, I need their faith above all.  Make no mistake.  We are not looking for emotional gadgetry to twist a stubborn lid from the jar.  We must stay mindful of this, that God is not moved by our posturings and posings and pretences.

Nevertheless, our God has compassions that can be kindled, that have been kindled, and often by those who managed to hold Him and not let Him go … even to fight through the crowd to touch the hem of His garment. Is it possible that some of our everyday busy-nesses and distractions and dissipations have become the throng through which we must push and shove?  For this moment I must speak for myself … I think in my life, it is very possible.

Not busy-nesses alone, but diversions and entertainments and interruptions galore, not just the ringing phone or instant messages, oh no!  If only! I provide my own.

Oh dear.  Rats! Just now, this instant, as I am writing, I am forced to realize (though not to confess; I do that because I owe honesty,) that I had a canceled appointment this morning that afforded me at least three or four hours free, unencumbered, already carved out, that I might have spent before the Lord.  I did not.

I think I’d rather not write further today.  I was going to introduce a bit more information from Scripture about “crying out” to the Lord, but I just can’t/won’t.  Tomorrow.  I cannot redeem the time … and we will certainly talk about that at some point … but I have an hour or two to give if I will stop here.  I am inclined to weep FOR ME … I am sorrowing right now that I would so surrender the time I was given right in the middle of this blog series on “caring deeply” … but I won’t.  Friends in trouble, wounded, hurting, in prison, wretched, sick, widowed, I will grieve for them … and today, for any of us who are making ourselves superfluous, for that is truly, horribly grievous.

I had best not flood the pasture, but I will choose one or two as the Lord directs, and pray.

Eugene Onegin Illustration

“A Superfluous Man” – Elena Samokysh Sudkovskaya,1908

Wikipedia, by permission

And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.

Matthew 24:12 (ESV)

Let us consider today that there at least two factors at work as we seek to care as deeply as we can, praying for those we love.

None of us dispute the teaching of Scripture, that our Father, our God, wants us to be a prayerful people.  We are called His House of Prayer.  We are encouraged to pray at all times, to pray for those in ministry and in positions of authority, to pray for one another, to pray for those that are burdened and weighed down.  Of all the exhortations in the New Testament, watching and praying seems to take the ascendance.

We say, too, that we probably pray the better the more we love, and that touches upon what we are seeing during this season of exploration and honesty.  We do love, but we know we could love better, much of the time.  What’s more, most of us know and could say that we have failed to love, and in more than one circumstance.  Sometimes it felt certain persons were requiring more than we could or would wish to give; sometimes we felt depleted in our own lives, dried up, even a little bitter, with nothing much to give.  At times the sheer enormity of the weight of the burdens around us was so great that we realize we never even made a start.

We cannot pray more effectively than the Lord Who is the Spirit, but we can pray with Him.  Much more on that tomorrow, but for today, if we can begin to match His zeal, as far as it has to do with us, we will be doing very well.  His groanings (Romans 8:26) and His compassion are ours in Christ. In truth, we do not have to come to the measure of His mercy and love … we need only draw from them.  If we never care as deeply as He does, we will care with Him and of Him and through Him, and that is how it should be.  He always measures with His own measurement, thankfully.

So in the ideal, we care because He cares, and we care with Him and because of Him.

But however are we to get to that high plateau?  For a little change, let’s see if we can answer by stating what we DO NOT do.

We do not shut down, no matter the enormity of the need.

We do not give up, no matter the sparsity of our compassion.

We do not stay away from the Throne of Grace, no matter our fears and failures.

We do not consign others to bondage, disease, failure, darkness, no matter the lateness of the hour or the lawlessness abounding.

That seems to work, those decisions.

In the enormity of need, our God is Fullness and Fully Able.

In the sparsity of our own compassion, His can still flow like a River of Life, and ours can be kindled anew.  Even when we don’t feel loving, our prayers simply ARE.

In fear and in failure, theirs and ours, the invitation to approach the Throne where our God reigns in glory and grace, is open, and we may ascend to it.

In the lateness and perverseness of the hour, the fact that we care at all and seek to care more deeply, proves the mercies of Christ and that there will be those in whom love burns bright to the end.

We have known today’s Scripture for years, and we have used it to comment upon the age and the disaster of cold love.  Today we determine this, that since not all will abandon the white heat of the love of Christ, we will be numbered among them. So, two factors:

• It isn’t easy to care in this age,
• but we must, and we may, fervently.

Divers Cruelties, William Okeley, 11 April, 1675

Wikipedia, by permission

Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.

1 Corinthians 4:2 (NIV)

Sometimes the abject hopelessness of circumstances, with a little devilish prompting, makes us begin to act as though our Desperate Little Friends are meant to be where they are.  As we said on Day One, these are hard questions.  Why are so many still so wretched?

“Who has sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind” and left to beg on the streets (John 9:1-12)?  We’re such great compartmentalizers!  Those who suffer patiently get our “Book of Job Award and Citation,” with never a thought, “Is this trial meant to last forever?” or “What if it were MY trial?”

Those who don’t remain serene have at times been abandoned to their lack of faith or a false notion of the Lord’s endless, unremittent “testing,” as if He just could not seem to affect a breakthrough for them, thus they must remain oppressed.  Such prolonged testing might, but also might not be of God, and what if they were our children or parents or loved ones?  What if their ordeal was undermining rather than building their faith?

What if the testing turns out to be as much ours as theirs? What if the acute pain we see around us proves our hearts as much as the hearts of those who suffer?  Have we, perhaps, been passing by on the other side of the road?

It is something like this, I think, but thinking hurts!  If those we know, those on our lists, who suffer physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and even for those who seem not to suffer at all while their sins and misdeeds mount up, if we pray at all, how shall we pray?  If you made a list of Desperate Little Friends, their desperation likely melted your heart, made you want to be a part of their breakthrough, but if we will not care deeply, if we will not stay the course, why start?  (Like I said, thinking hurts!). If we prayed a time or two, judged our D.L.F.s to be unchanged and their circumstances unchanging, were they really not in great need after all? See paragraphs two and three!

This isn’t the fast-food window.  This might be the no food window, for a season! Understandably, in human terms, we have strayed from the idea of praying until the answer comes, in part because there have been too many wounded, too many in too great a need, too long a line waiting for an organ donor.  There are only just so many fresh, clean, strong and beating hearts available for transplant!

Thank God we do not have to wait for the help they need. We are the help they need.  Of course it is only Who the Lord is and what He can do that will change things, but our caring, with faith and obedience, has to be the best we can do, and it has to be what they need from us and why we are made to be a House of Prayer, more than anything else.  I have seen marriages, divisions, bondages, fears, turn on the head of a pin, spinning away from destruction, never to wound any more. I have also known my deepest, most heartfelt prayers to go answered, or not with the answer I sought, but I have never known caring to fail, because it never comes to an end.

Even as I write, I am remembering a couple for whom I cared deeply, whose marriage ended in an awful divorce, complete with infidelity and an aborted inconvenient baby, not to mention emotional cruelty beyond description.  My thoughts turned to my friend, the wife, with whom I am still close.  But he!  Her former husband … for him I very, very seldom pray anymore, I just realized.  I will check with the Lord today and see if I have been released from that responsibility or not.  If not, the heart that still beats strong is my own, and I need to employ it, caring, caring deeply, for as long as it takes.  I see that I do not care about him; I just need to check to see if the Lord still does.

We cannot stay on our knees all day long, and we cannot make anything or anyone change.  But this I have seen, faithfulness is required of us, and faithfulness without mercy and compassion, love and steadfastness, is not the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.

Wikipedia, fair use, by permission

Dr. John P. Merrill (left) explains the workings of a then-new machine called an artificial kidney to Richard Herrick (middle) and his brother Ronald (right). The Herrick twin brothers were the subject of the world’s first successful kidney transplant, Ronald being the donor.

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience … (Colossians 3:12, ESV)

Now we must ask another question, “If the compassions of our God can be touched, aroused, set aflame, mustn’t it be true that ours can be, too?”

The thing that arrests our attention is that, seemingly, we are the agents of the breath that fans the flame.  We can stir the heart of God, and we are told to stir up our own hearts toward kindness and mercy.  None of this comes about apart from Him, but we are agents of change, through the faith and the depths of the compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ birthed in us.

Those “compassionate hearts” in the Scripture above are, in the King James Version, “bowels of mercy,” and they are to be ours, and we are to … well, acquire them.  Again, by faith, of course, but it is an assignment.  To us it has been given to choose the deepest compassion we can know, and because we can, we must.

We will speak more and much of how this may take place, and why it must, but is there not already the plight of at least one person, one marriage, one horror of 21^stCentury life that moves you, that moves me, nearly to tears?

For many years now, with a few close friends and praying associates, I have kept a list of “D.L.F.”s.  It’s an endearing take on the passage in the Narnia Chronicles where Edmund Pevensie called the brave, the stalwart … the PROUD! … Trumpkin the dwarf his Dear Little Friend.  Trumpkin doesn’t take kindly to the epithet, and Edmund graciously shortened it to “D.L.F.”. I and several others have been keeping lists of our Dear, but Desperate Little Friends, those who have been long sick or in pain, too long bound up in addictions, some languishing in prison, some chronically lonely, and many who have just contracted a Failure to Thrive syndrome that has not been overcome.  There is not one of them for whom I could not cry if I were able actually to feel all that they feel in their circumstances.  These are more than friends going through tough times; these are my dear and Desperate Little Friends.

May I recommend the compiling of such a list? It might surprise you how many names would be on it, with very little casting about to think of more.  Some on my list may well have turned their faces to the wall as King Hezekiah did, in anguish and fear, and in truth, when I first saw all those names written down, I nearly wanted to turn away … there were too many!, and their needs were too great!   One by one, over the ears, I continue to try to pray for them as if I might be the only person on earth doing so, and not because I think I’m the only one, but because I might be, and even if the whole world were praying for them, many of them aren’t free yet, they are not yet healed, and their situations are abysmally tragic and distressing.

And what’s more … I do care.  Turned around, your list will show you how far-reaching is the compassion of your soul in Christ Jesus.

By permission, Wikipedia to Wiki Commons

Genesis 12 – the similarities between neurological symptoms of physical and emotional pain