Over the past few months I’ve been asked to pray for an increasing number of families in very sad and painful situations:
- Four precious children suffering from various childhood cancers
- One young girl needing a heart transplant
- Another girl with a brain tumor
- A mother of seven children diagnosed with terminal cancer
- A family of four whose mother died last week in childbirth
- Another young mother of four, again with end-stage breast cancer
- A mother of three children with stage three breast cancer
- A family of a middle-aged man who committed suicide
- Another woman who is throwing everything medical science can offer at her breast cancer
- A family who have been struggling with a severely disabled baby
- A 70-year-old woman who died after a long battle with kidney failure, leaving behind a Christian husband with severe Alzheimer’s
- A family whose two daughters were in separate car crashes in the space of a week the second of whom is still critically ill
- A mother whose baby died in the womb shortly before delivery
- A couple of families struggling with disabled children
I do try to regularly pray for them all. But to be quite honest, I’m absolutely overwhelmed with the sorrow of it all at times.
And yet, if it wasn’t for the Internet, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc, I would probably only know of three or four of these agonizing situations. Digital technology has brought so much more information into our lives, much of which we welcome and enjoy. But, there’s also this downside (may I call it that?), that we are exposed to far more sorrow and pain than we would have been only 10-15 years ago, when all we had was our local community and church. Now, instead of being familiar with say 50-100 families, we have the news of hundreds and hundreds of families being brought to us at top speed along the information superhighway. Thus the number of sad situations to think about and pray for are multiplied. My children pick up on this, and are also praying for long lists of suffering people they’ve never met. Is that good for them? International sadnessOn top of that, there’s the international news. Not so long ago we had the daily newspaper and maybe a few minutes of TV and radio news a day. Now we have news tickers on our Desktop and Twitter feeds on our phones bringing us the latest from multiple trouble spots around the world. I really would like to be more prayerfully concerned for Egypt, Tunisia, and Jordan. But my world prayers are already full with North Korea, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel. Am I obliged to carry the whole world in my heart? Then I ask myself, “Am I being selfish?” Or does God really require of me to take on all the sorrows and sadnesses of people I don’t even know and nations I have no connection with whatsoever? I want to sympathize with suffering people, but I feel so much my own emotional, mental, spiritual and even physical limitations. Am I allowed to say, “I don’t want to hear of another tragedy?” “I can’t cope with another cancer.” Then I worry, “What if it’s me next? Or one of my children?” I too would probably send out prayer requests everywhere, with multiple minute medical updates. The Man of sorrows
And all this leads me again to worship at the feet of the Lord Jesus who voluntarily came from his perfect peaceful home to this world of trouble and turmoil; who actively sought out sad people to sympathize with; who “bore our griefs and carried our sorrows”; “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Behold the Man with unlimited sympathy and empathy. Behold his huge and unlimited heart. Behold his tender and sensitive love! I come to Him, weary and heavy laden, saying: “Lord I cannot cope with all these sorrows. But you can. I have no more capacity, but you have. My sympathy reserves are empty, but yours are ever full. My heart is narrow and limited, but yours is immeasurably wide. Please take these sorrows and extend your sympathy. And more than that, add your power to your pity; add your hand to your heart. Feel what I cannot feel. And do what I cannot do.”