Liberia. Photo credit: Geoff Crawford
‘Need is all around me, it’s everywhere I go, I hear it on the TV, and on the radio o o’
Compassion fatigue is already a cliché. Thanks to information globalisation, we can stoop with the needs of an aching world on our shoulders.
But is famine in Ethiopia or persecution in Colombia your personal problem?
Flick through the beginning chapters of Luke’s gospel. In the crowd of need, Jesus sees individuals. In chapter 5 he heals the paralysed man let down through the roof into a packed-out room. In chapter 8 he knows when the lady who had been bleeding touched him as people press in on him from all sides, and a chapter later he hears the man in the crowd who wants his son be rid of evil spirits.
None of us are Jesus, rather obviously, but can we learn something from this?
No need
In Acts, Jesus has gone back up to heaven, and left the continuation of the Christian faith in the hands of the apparently unqualified. And yet, in the early Church, with a little bit of help from the Holy Spirit...
‘All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions were his own, but they shared everything that they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them.’
These early followers of Jesus probably didn’t know who was in need outside of Jerusalem. But they were sharing what they had, which is a concept that has been lost a bit in the Western world.
It’s been left to us as Christians to counter this trend of giving, to restore the early church to what it once was - a beautiful thing of unity and community and power. We believe in the power of the local church. Our vision is to have a network of local churches, working with communities and challenging poverty and injustice all round the world. Our vision is to see the local church thriving and empowered rather than weakened by need.
Church choir
‘Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world,’ says Bishop Desmond Tutu.
In the face of the awfulness of apartheid, he didn’t give up, and wisely knew the best way to change the world.
As the gentle whisper of each churchgoer joins together it becomes part of a chorus of hope that subtly and gradually changes the world.
May your life whisper of hope and justice and truth and grace and beauty. Help us to help churches around the world and you’ll become part of a chorus of hope that is subtly and gradually changing the world.