No wonder you’re feeling tense.
You want the best for your life and the lives of those around you – comfort, security, love, happiness, fulfilment – why wouldn’t you?
Your prayer life is probably a testimony to your desire for good things: Dear Lord, please let me get that job, please let us have a really good holiday, please heal Mrs Bradley’s arthritis etc.
But every time you open a newspaper or turn on the telly, there it is: the bad stuff.
Truth is, things aren’t ok, are they?
If trouble isn’t living at your house, then it’s getting comfy at the house next door.
Things aren’t ok; this world is not ok. There’s a battle raging, the fight between good and bad, the brokenness of this world in startling evidence.
It’s an odd hope that your life should be all good, when suffering is so present so much of the time.
Yet the strangest twist in a life with Christ is that despite the pain of this world, there is peace and joy to be found with him now.
Even now, even in this world, despite appearances, the kingdom is already come.
Picture: Jim Loring/Tearfund
In John’s gospel Jesus brings his disciples close to despair when he warns how he will soon have to leave them, but he ends with these extraordinary words of encouragement:
`I have told you these things, so that you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.’ (John 16:33)
Jesus has overcome the world, and peace in a world of trouble is only possible because of it.
God promises to give us hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 6:26), not hearts of gold. We are going to need to be able to feel in this life.
Feelings make us human, and to be as human as we can be is a most precious thing in the eyes of God.
But feelings mean pain, at least in this world, and we need pain if we’re going to do the compassionate, feeling work of God.
So let’s pray for good things – we do that because we love, and true love always hopes for the best.
But let’s pray for those hearts of flesh that are ready to hurt, and then act, on behalf of an emotional, feeling God.
The following was adapted by a Tearfund worker from a prayer by St Francis of Assisi:
‘May God bless us with discomfort... at easy answers and half truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts.
May God bless us with anger… at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless us with tears…to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them, and turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless us with enough foolishness…. to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can to what others claim cannot be done.
Amen.'