Lent 2020 day 29

’You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed.’ - Psalm 10:17- 18‬

Gideon Heugh writes:

“It's easy to look at the news these days and feel hopeless. How do we keep going when enormous problems like coronavirus and climate change loom over us? How do we feel positive about the world when the poor, marginalised and oppressed are so often ignored?

We may feel hopeless, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t hope. We may not always see it, but history has an ultimate trajectory – one that is guided by the hand of God.

Crises come, but they also go. Empires rise, but they also fall. In the end, power will always be proved to be powerless against love – the only thing that lasts forever.

The story of God is liberation. The heartbeat of heaven sounds like chains being broken. Anything or anyone that oppresses, marginalises or excludes is setting itself against the Rock of Ages.

Though it sometimes doesn’t seem like it, we are moving forward. As the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr famously put it: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’

The issues we’re facing seem huge. Insurmountable, even. But they are not greater than God, for whom all things are possible. Let us remember now that he is with us, always.

Father God,
Instil in me the hope that comes with the deep knowledge of you. Help me to better perceive your hand upon history – the deliverance that your Holy Spirit is constantly and forever working in the world. And give me the courage and the wisdom to play my part. Amen.”