Thoughts for the Day

To you I lift up my eyes,
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
As the eyes of servants
look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid
to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
until he has mercy upon us.

Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us,
for we have had more than enough of contempt.
Our soul has had more than its fill
of the scorn of those who are at ease,
of the contempt of the proud.

(Lectionary, New Revised Standard Version)

Thoughts

Our world is in a mess! We all know it, and we don't know what to do about it. We have a war in the Middle East with all sides playing tit-for-tat and with numbers of civilian casualties seemingly rising out of all control. We have a sovereign country like Ukraine invaded by Russia, with the war continuing. If that were all it would be bad enough, but at the start of 2024 there were conflicts in Sudan, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Armenia, and Niger, to mention but a few, some of these with casualties and/or deaths in the hundreds of thousands.

At the same time our world is suffering from the effects of global warming with 'hundred-year storms' occurring every-other year that sweep away homes and displace thousands; wildfires in the US and Greece that rage for months and destroy whole villages; and higher-than normal rainfall that floods vast areas of Europe. We know what to do to stop this, but the world is slow to get rid of fossil fuels and move to newer technologies, and is failing to stop the destruction of our rain forests.

As one person in this world of 8,005,176,000 people (as of January 2024) what can we do to make a difference? Well we can obviously do things that leave a smaller carbon footprint (see Further Thoughts below), but this might feel so insignificant against the overwhelming causes of the problem, that we do nothing. So is there something else? Yes, there is! Psalm 123 knows the answer. As Christians it's time to put our prayers to God into action each day, asking God to have mercy on us and on our world, and praying for all involved in endeavouring to bring change to our world.

Father-God,
as one individual we feel helpless against
the overwhelming disasters in our world.
We know much of this is caused by human neglect,
or wickedness, or by selfishness,
and we know some of the changes that could be made
to alleviate the worse of issues like climate change.
Help us to make a start by re-evaluating our life-style
and making changes to the way we live.
Then may we continue daily to pray for our world,
asking Your mercy on its people,
and on all who seek to make changes to improve
the current global situation.
We ask this through our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ.
Amen.