Monday 12 September 2011

Prayer and Encouragement

The ten year marker has just passed for the biggest single loss of innocent life by any terrorist organisation in a peacetime country for many many years. Nine/ Eleven, or 9/11 as it has become known, was a terrible day, and a blot on the landscape of human history. We should remember these times, not because we are a gory people, but because we should stand together, and we believe in prayer and encouragement.

There is an old saying, “An ounce of encouragement is worth a ton of correction”. I also think an ounce of encouragement is worth a ton of silence (if you can have a ton of silence!). From that viewpoint, I was pleased to see the many Christian churches, across our own nation, and others, who stood beside a grieving nation as they mourned their losses. Each mourning an individual who left someone behind to feel the loss. Each one should feel they are not alone, or forgotten.

You in your small corner, and I in mine”, can't do very much to help, but we can pray individually, or collectively. By that small act we encourage those who need it. I believe the small orphaned child's simple prayer will have every bit as much weight before the Throne of Grace, as the eloquent prayers uttered in Churches across the world. But together they are a formidable defence and statement of our faith, and a common encouragement to all who call themselves 'Peacemakers', after all, Jesus said they are the ones who will inherit the earth, not the terrorist! Makes you think of the encouragement of public prayer, doesn't it? 

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