Nehemiah 1: 2-4 - In late autumn, in the month of Kislev, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes’ reign, I was at the fortress of Susa. Hanani, one of my brothers, came to visit me with some other men who had just arrived from Judah. I asked them about the Jews who had returned there from captivity and about how things were going in Jerusalem. They said to me, “Things are not going well for those who returned to the province of Judah. They are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down, and the gates have been destroyed by fire.” When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven. (NLT)
If you are like me, you are constantly made aware of problems or news stories in the world that sound unsolvable. Whether it’s the effects of changes in the weather systems that leave thousands of people without water or food for months, stories of human trafficking, sexual exploitation, war, medical need, poverty, homelessness, the lack of clean water or the number of people who haven’t heard the gospel; these problems all seem overwhelming, insurmountable and distressing.
Many of us, like Nehemiah, hear about the stories of the people walking through these problems from 3rd parties like news outlets, social media platforms, friends, colleagues or charities. When we hear of these stories something stirs in our spirits. We sense the injustice and are moved to compassion for the people experiencing such terrible circumstances.
However, unlike Nehemiah, most of us stop there. We are compassionate but don’t do anything about it or we start a plan to change the world but leave God out of it. In today’s passage, we learn something small that we all know but probably don’t do often enough or with as much intentionality as Nehemiah did. After Nehemiah heard the news from Jerusalem, he sat down, wept and then prayed and fasted for days. This should be our response to the bad news stories we hear in our world BEFORE we try to solve them.
Questions for reflection: When was the last time I prayed and fasted about the wicked problems in the world? When was the last time I prayed and fasted about a news story?
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