This is the text to one of the songs that we sang in worship this morning. It comes from Brazil and is called “For the Troubles”: For the troubles and the suffering of the worldGod, we call upon your mercy:The whole creation’s laboring in pain!Lend an ear to the rising cry for helpFrom oppressed and hopeless people.Come! Hasten your salvation, healing love!We pray for peace,The blessed peace that comes from making justice,To cover and embrace us.Have mercy, Lord!We pray for power,The power that will sustain your people’s witnessUntil your kingdom comes,Kyrie eleison! These words capture much of what I have been thinking and feeling in the last few weeks. Last week, I visited a family--a grandmother and three grandsons who are in middle and high school. They are Rwandan, but each of the boys was born in a different country (Kenya, Tanzania, and Democratic Republic of the Congo). At one point, the boys lived in an orphanage in Zambia. They all ended up together in Grand Rapids, but life is not blissful here. In the faces of the boys I saw adults not children. They should be playing video games and thinking about girls, not worrying about translating for their grandmother or how she is going to pay the rent. And in the midst of all this trouble and suffering, God, we call upon your mercy, because it is the only thing big enough to help.
And in the midst of all the troubles, we pray for peace. We pray for shalom—wholeness and flourishing—to come. I am intrigued by the phrase “peace that comes from making justice.” I know in a theoretical way that it is true. Without justice, there can’t be shalom. But I wonder what it means in my life and in the life of my church? We pray for it, but we also have to participate in making justice. And I’m not sure what that might mean for us, in our neighborhood. How are we called to make justice?
Of course, suffering isn’t going to stop, and shalom isn’t going to come fully until Jesus returns. Until then, we live in a fallen world full of genocide and sudden deaths, starvation and terrorism. But we look forward to the day that God will make everything new. So as we live in a world of sorrow, kyrie eleison! Come quickly, Lord Jesus!
And in the midst of all the troubles, we pray for peace. We pray for shalom—wholeness and flourishing—to come. I am intrigued by the phrase “peace that comes from making justice.” I know in a theoretical way that it is true. Without justice, there can’t be shalom. But I wonder what it means in my life and in the life of my church? We pray for it, but we also have to participate in making justice. And I’m not sure what that might mean for us, in our neighborhood. How are we called to make justice?
Of course, suffering isn’t going to stop, and shalom isn’t going to come fully until Jesus returns. Until then, we live in a fallen world full of genocide and sudden deaths, starvation and terrorism. But we look forward to the day that God will make everything new. So as we live in a world of sorrow, kyrie eleison! Come quickly, Lord Jesus!
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