news of people suffering in zimbabwe continue to be the focus of papers here. i feel wrenched within. at mass, my heart is with them. the gulf between comfort and disturbance separating my life and theirs' unsettles. today, i read the papers drawn towards a portrait of a zimbabwean child languishing from untreated state of aids infection. he lives in a fly-infested slump within a country on the brink of famine and civil war. he fends fellow child-soldiers and adult militias from his father's property, or whatever is left of it.
it is easy for me to curse the corrupting leadership of robert mugabe and his mindless set of militia hounds. i pray many times that he be removed from power, right now... so that peace can be restored in the land. yet mugabe's weakness is but many of history's tyrants and dictators who have ruled their nations with an iron hand. yet history, humanity and yourself have borne them patiently from ages past. we fall and fall badly into ruin.
to throw labels at them does not help either. neither am i willing or able to detach myself from daily reports of senseless violence, hunger and injustice that stain my breakfast as i read the papers.
i pray in silence and often in a helpless state, trusting with bare faith that the little i do can help place the love and saving mercy of God in a land where evil seems to thrive. what i wish to think becomes a mere shadow of an unsaid prayer. i do not know how to pray in a time like this. it is easier to wrangle & think than to struggle and pray.
Lord, take me away from the convenience of rhetoric and place me near the centre of your call, where in prayer, i may be placed in the midst of my sister and brother in war-torn zimbabwe.
Be present to us in our helpless state. Give us faith to believe for certain, that you will come to deliver us from this evil.
O Lord, listen to my prayer
and let my cry for help reach you.
Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress.
Turn your ear towards me
and answer me quickly when i call.
The nations shall fear the name of the Lord
and all the earth's kings your glory,
when the Lord shall build up Zion again
and appear in all his glory.
Then he will turn to the prayers of the helpless;
he will not despise their prayers.
Let this be written for ages to come
that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord;
for the Lord leaned down from his sanctuary from on high.
He looked down from heaven to the earth
that he might hear the groans of the prisoners
and free those condemned to die.
pslam 101
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