The flock of birds were waiting for a refill on this snowy,
below-freezing morning in February. Groundhog day, though that’s another story
and not one that is observed in Scotland.
Peanut and grain feeders replenished and an apple cut and
placed on the ground, and they resume their task: to eat enough today to stay
alive.
As I prayed over our world, I prayed for those in refugee
camps. I thought of those people, often without
hope, purpose, or vision. I thought of them as they wait like the birds, hoping
to be fed today. Nursing grief and anxiety, sorrow and loneliness and fear,
living in substandard accommodation and dependent on hand-outs: it is not the
way God designed it.
The birds don’t crave dignity and respect. They just focus
on eating and staying alive so they can procreate and raise up the next
generation to fill our world with beauty and play their part in the fertility
of flowers, fruit and so on.
The refugees must crave many things. Not least a fresh
vision of where God fits into their situation. How hard it must be to hang on
to faith when all has been swept away.
There are examples in the Bible of those who did just that,
though. Take Job, sorely tried and afflicted but he never turned against God
and eventually God spoke to him. There are others, too, who kept their faith in
their Lord to deliver, though as Daniel’s friends said, even if God didn’t save
them from the fiery furnace they would still worship and trust in him.
How would I do under such severe testing? There’s no
knowing. My task today is not to imagine how I would do but to pray for those
who are in the testing times now, that our compassionate and loving Lord will
deliver them, will feed and clothe and rescue them from the oppressors.
Our hope is built on Jesus Christ, who is faithful.
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