Micah Reflection

I got this prayer and reflection from a wonderful collaboration of the Micah Network and World Evangelical Alliance - the Micah Challenge. The challenge aims to mobilize Christians against global poverty. The campaign aims to deepen Christian engagement with impoverished and marginalized communities, and to influence leaders of rich and poor nations to fulfill their promise to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

---------------------------------------

Reflection
‘TV has made us into monsters’ is the title of the above picture of London artist Banksy.
It shows graphically how Christians in the Global North can too easily ignore poverty issues if they are delivered on TV. In our world of mass media we are bombarded with people’s needs from all around the world. How can we avoid turning a blind eye to them?

In Matthew 20:29-34 we read of Jesus’ healing of two blind men. The bible says that Jesus ‘had compassion on them’ and then helped them. As a result of Jesus’ actions the men followed Jesus and praised God; so did all the people who had witnessed the scene.

Let us pray:

Lord, we pray for compassionate hearts so that we can respond to needs close by but also globally. We also pray that we will use our resources wisely and generously.
We pray for Micah Challenge Haiti. Valery Vital-Herne, the coordinator of MC Haiti writes:

‘As you may know the situation is terrible in Haiti. About 8/10 departments had severe floods. We are still counting the dead. The Minister of Finance has estimated the destruction to more than 10 billion US dollars. We were in harvest time, so no need to tell you how great the lost is. There are about one million stricken people. The main roads and bridges leading to the most affected departments are destroyed. So relief is delayed.

Pray also for the church to be courageous and be the heart, hand, feet of Christ to express love and compassion to the most afflicted.’

Meditate on the Statistics

‘Between 1970 and 1990, Asia-Pacific as a whole managed to reduce its annual number of under-five deaths from 10.5 million to 6.7 million. Despite these attainments, major challenges for child and maternal survival remain. Asia-Pacific’s absolute numbers of child deaths, though falling, remain high… Worldwide, of the 9.7 million children who died before their fifth birthday in 2006, more than 40 per cent were from this region. Of the six countries accounting for half of all deaths of children under age five worldwide, three are in the Asia-Pacific region: China, India and Pakistan. India alone accounts for one fifth of under-five deaths worldwide, with 2.1 million in 2006.’