Standing in the Gap for All

Another horrible tragedy made the news this week. A fourteen-year old boy murdered his stepmother. I found myself looking to find out who it was, hoping it was not a former student of mine when I was a principal in a primary school. As soon as the name was released and I learned that this boy was from a neighboring district instead, I was relieved, giving it no more thought.

This morning, I ran into a friend at our local Y. She is a guidance counselor at that neighboring school, and was sharing her raw pain with the situation and knowing this young man to not have had any previous indication of such behavior.  Suddenly, I noticed a flaw in myself. How easy it was to dismiss the incident when I didn’t think I knew the boy. Yet, as soon as I was made aware that his life touched someone I did know, the tragedy became more real for me again.

I am left wondering why I can so easily move on when I don’t have a personal connection. Pain is pain. Tragedy is real.

I would like to think of myself as someone with empathy, but I am now noticing my reaction is all too often to not allow an emotional connection when it is someone else’s kid. It’s another district’s problem. Is this a protective reaction that I have? Don’t look so I don’t have to feel their pain?

I couldn’t watch the videos of the children dying from the poisonous gas in Syria. I don’t know anyone from Syria, and those videos were too graphic for me.  It was safer to not look.

Somehow my response is more intense when I am personally connected somehow.

I think God is working with me on this. He often wakes me up in the middle of the night to pray for people that I don’t even know. He gives me a first name, and sometimes the situation to pray for. Are my prayers more effective when they are for those I do not know? A woman named Cheryl who was contemplating suicide for her and her unborn baby. A lady named Shannon that believed she was all alone with no one who cared about her. A man who thought God had forgotten him. A child who didn’t want to be hungry anymore.

As I type these situations, my heart is breaking. I do not know these people, and yet, God has asked me to intercede on their behalf.

Yet, I can readily shut off the news, stop the videos on my social media, skim over the articles in the newspapers and not give these horrors any more of my time.

I do not understand intercessory prayer, and yet I am called to participate in it. Why then is my initial reaction to recoil and walk away? Why does God have to wake me up in the middle of the night for prayer? Is it because I can so easily turn Him down in the day?

I am all for knowing my boundaries, but I sure don’t want my protective parts to keep me from the journey I have chosen to walk in His presence.  I will be more aware of this initial response that I have to shy away from tragedy and begin to ask this:

Papa, what do you want me to know about this and how do You want me to pray? Maybe then I will begin to see that my role is not to stand in the gap for just those I know, but for all I am called to serve.