God, Forgive “us”

In those days I, Daniel, was mourning three full weeks.

Daniel 10:2

Although the organs and limbs of the human body have their own individualized functions, they are interconnected as they work together to keep us alive and well. If we cut a finger, the platelets in our blood, which the heart is pumping through our bodies, form a clot at the site of the cut to stop the bleeding. The other parts of the body bear the burden of the suffering part.

Daniel must have felt some sense of burden as well when it came to the nation of Israel. More than once he prayed and sought God’s forgiveness and guidance for sinful Israel, even though he himself had done nothing wrong. In Daniel’s prayer of confession for his nation’s sins in Daniel 9, the word we occurs thirteen times—even though Daniel was not involved personally in the idolatry and disobedience that sentenced the nation in Babylon to judgment. Yet he identified with the spiritual condition of his people, his kinsmen in the flesh, and cried out to God for them.

Christians should have the same burden for the nations in which they live—for their neighbors, leaders, and friends who do not know Christ. Look around you today and see whose spiritual need you can ask God to meet.

May God pity a nation whose factory chimneys rise higher than her church steeples.

JOHN KELMAN