When the tears flow..
Jer 9:1 Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
This week I have been involved in preparing for the school leavers and the massive Margaret River bush fires. Both occasions are events that happen this time of the year here in Western Australia and through out greater Australia. Not fires in Margaret River but schoolies and the accompanying bush fires that come with the hot Australian summer.
Both move my heart as a Pastor and as a follower of Jesus Christ. The ‘schoolies’ breaks both my heart as a father as well as my wife Helen’s as a mother. I see such young innocent children, fresh faced, entering an environment that is full of traps, snares, pressures, dangers and possible long term consequences. As I see the small groups walking, there is always a mixture of personalities. The leader, the followers, the fearful, the don’t really don’t want to be there’s and the outrageous. Somehow our parents now have considered ‘schoolies’ as part of the road to adulthood and the necessary initiation to life and its extremism’s.
To see such young ones so vulnerable is akin to seeing children entering a jungle teeming with predators.
The bush fire, is simply a force that takes no prisoners. It sweeps through and turns a home into ash, memories into smoke and nothing can withstand its heat.
The tears flow because the ‘schoolies’ are young boys and girls, youth whose lives you know would blossom under the blessing of having Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. A future of hope, grace and love!
The fires, if only our churches bulged at the prayer meetings whilst they raged, if only smoke covered and shattered people would come to find strength and comfort in the arms of Jesus their Saviour. Yet sadly there is no increase in seeking God.
The prophet Jeremiah gives us the model of a believer’s position of prayer for his nation, his people, God’s people.
I am sure Jeremiah would have tears for our ‘schoolies’ and tears for our land for the people who need Jesus so much but just don’t know how to find Him.
Let us pray…and let us be moved….for the innocence of our youth is being brutalized and seized from them and our people are perishing for a lack of knowledge……..of God!