Give Us Courage

“Thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Consider your ways!’” Haggai 1:7

Last week, we read two devotionals entitled “Unclean” about living a life of love towards the unlovely, and reaching out in uncomfortable or new situations. It challenged me to take a hard look at my own life and whether I was living out God’s will in these areas.

I’ve succeeded at times, and I’ve failed at times. People I thought I could never care for, never help, never even speak to, were plopped into my path for the short term, indeed, and sometimes were installed into my life for the long term. (Anyone have a difficult family member, perhaps someone with mental illness, or a social disability, or a hard and unforgiving heart?) Some I have loved and helped; some I have tolerated, giving what I felt to be minimally required of me; and some I have ignored or snubbed entirely, protecting myself and my comfort zone. My failures are many.

One step I am taking to remedy my unclean heart is to look into the lives of women living in conditions far worse than my own. This is easy until something is required of me. It’s easy to read books or magazine articles about their plight, to ponder their stories, to see pictures of their world and what they look out upon every day. As I pray for God to open the parts of my heart that are closed and locked, I imagine their hardships. I begin to wonder about them day by day. This leads me to pray for these unknown women living in unknown locations, their families and concerns, hearts and minds and fears unknown to me. Unexpectedly, I begin to love them.

From afar. From my living room chair. Not one step closer.

Father, is this how it starts, this love for others, this heart to be a witness? Somehow, someone is impressed upon our minds, and then we begin to care, as we consider their lives on earth now, their lives without You in eternity.

I heard a woman (named Naghmeh Abedini), born in Iran, speak at a women’s conference, and I have since read her tale again and again as Christian women’s magazines share her story. Her tale seems hopeless. In short, she, her husband, and their two children were living regular American lives in Idaho and would sometimes go back to Iran, where they were from, to witness there; her husband was arrested, interrogated, jailed, and is now regularly subjected to torture and beatings. This has been going on for over three years, and they have no hope of it ever ending because he will never renounce his faith in Christ.

How does this wife face each day? How does she sleep, as her imagination of what her husband is going through must surely hammer away at her peace? (It’s a long story—she is taking steps to gain his release, talking to the government, sharing his plight when she can; she has the peace that passes understanding. But still, it’s a new normal for her, something most of us can’t fathom.)

I know that in this case, all I can do is pray—and that is a big, powerful response because of our big, powerful God.

But what about so many other opportunities within my reach? What will I do with those? Engage, or ignore? Look, or hide? Reach out, or pull back?

Lord, help us. By You, we can do hard things. “For by You I can run against a troop, by my God I can leap over a wall” (Psalm 18:29).

And that’s just what this feels like sometimes: running against an army of opposition (even though it is my own heart that opposes me), and leaping over a wall (even though I have built the wall myself.)

Father, forgive us our weaknesses. Give us courage to do what pleases You. Amen.