Will You Let War Stop You?

Today is the day to share your faith
by Paul Grant

Shortly before dawn on March 20, 2003, the air raid sirens began sounding in Baghdad. War had begun. If you listen carefully to the broadcast, you will hear three sounds: the sirens, the explosions, and the sparrows heralding the morning.

I recognized them as sparrows, because their song was the same as that of the birds outside my bedroom window who have been waking me up since winter retreated. At first I thought it ironic, that birds would be singing in war. Then I thought a little more about it.

Life and the Word

If you are reading this, you most likely do not have a superpower leveling blows at you. You most likely didn't have to rise in the morning to take shelter in the basement. But your life is no less hanging by a thread than the lives of scared Iraqi boys, conscripted to man anti-aircraft cannons. This is because all life is hanging by a word.

John 1 tells us that God created the universe, people, and sparrows by his Word.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. (John 1:1-4)

The passage goes further to identify Jesus of Nazareth as the Word:

The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. (verse 14)

Jesus is God, and Jesus is the supreme creator. He lived in our neighborhood for 33 years, before assuming his throne, after rising from death. He is the word of God, and the source of all life, from university students in Kenya, to Camas flowers in Idaho. Our life is a gift by the grace of God's word.

To be sure, the sparrows in Baghdad were singing in part out of ignorance. They don't understand the severity of war. They are only birds, and rather unintelligent birds at that. They would start singing in the morning even if a smallpox bomb had been dropped, so they are not a good indicator of our safety. But are we as humans not ignorant as well? If we knew half the things our heavenly father does about evil, we would crumple in horror. But God keeps evil on a leash, and our lives are in his hands.

In the coming days and years, the world will be no safer for us, or more dangerous, than it ever has been, if we are following our savior. Shortly after September 11, 2001, Marta Bennett, an American teaching in a Kenyan university wrote:

Some friends of mine were once challenged about a decision they were making about going into a war-torn area to serve in a ministry where their skills were urgently needed. After much prayer, they decided to continue to move ahead with their plans, even though there had been some recent kidnappings. When they were asked if they really thought it was safe to go, their reply was that they couldn't think of anywhere safer than being right in the center of God's will. Yes, they may die, but they were safer there than if they disobeyed what they deeply felt God calling them to do (they are still alive and well I might add). We are all going to die one day, one way or another; they preferred to place their lives in God's hands, to follow where he seemed to be leading them.

There is no place safer than being right in the center of God's will. This is true whether we are sparrows or soldiers or students. And for those outside of God's will, no place is safe, and there is no place with peace. The darkness of the soul is darker than that of the smallpox bomb. For those who don't know God, there is nothing scarier than death. Death, of course, is a major component of war, but it is an even larger component of life. All of us, those who know God and those who don't alike, will die. But for those outside of the hands of the Word of God, there is no reassurance. Death is the ultimate horror, and it seems to preoccupy us.

Death and White Noise

In the best novel on American life written in the last twenty years, White Noise, the author argues that the reason we fill our lives with white noise - busyness, stress, entertainment, shopping, fun, even credit card debt, is because they distract us. As a culture, we have attained prosperity and security to a degree unknown in world history - and we have managed to make it optional to face death on a daily basis.

Think about that! How rare indeed that we North Americans are so healthy and safe, that we can drown out the drums of life and death with things as simple as a packed schedule or a radio. Of course, distraction is just that - and it's no solution. If we have dread gnawing at our hearts, the distractions have to be sustained at a constant clip, and they will never give us ease.

We may be rich, we may be safe, healthy, with opportunities, and with dreams of love and life, and we may wake to the sound of sparrows chirping, but we have gotten no closer to peace, and no less dependent on God, than those waking to air raid sirens.

But as Christians, we don't often live as children in the hands of our heavenly father. We don't live as free from worry as the sparrows. Many of us are just as haunted as those around us who are trapped in sin and hell. We walk in forgiveness of sin, but not in the freedom from shame, or the peace of security, or the hope for tomorrow, that accompany Jesus' salvation.

There is no place to go, no fortress to build, no vitamin to ingest that will free us from utter dependence on the Word of God for our life, our hope, our love and our freedom. Conversely, there is no way to escape his love and care.

My family in Christ! We have more in common with the Christians in the Iraqi army than with the students down the hall who don't know about Jesus. We all have to face death, but the former have the same hope for life and salvation as us sitting in material safety; while the latter have the same uncertainty as children facing starvation in Zambia. Our hope and our salvation lie not in military might, in anti-terror intelligence, or in international law, or rule of law. Jesus is the only hope.

Life and Embarrassment

There are thousands of people on our campuses who cannot bear to face the very fact they can impossibly avoid: death. Yet in our interactions with them, we are primarily motivated by fear of appearing judgmental. We are persecuted by the pre-emptive strike of an inane accusation. We need to step back for perspective.

This is war. Terror is at hand. This is uncertainty at its best and worst. The boldest people in our classes, the hardest people in our dorms, and the rudest people on campus are all level with the timid and meek, when forced to stare into the emptiness of life. In war, the weakest and silliest of our objections to the gospel are washed like sandcastles on the beach: instantly they're gone.

Will you tell the students on your dorm floor about life? Will you shrug off the wet blanket of embarrassment and ask your peers the questions of fear and hope and life and salvation? If you don't, who will? War is an opportunity for the good news: an opportunity of honesty. The campus is ripe for harvest in a way it hasn't been for years and years. Will you ask the Word of God to set you free from fear and set you out to the dying?

This is the time. Don't click on another article. Don't watch another update that will distract you. If you're afraid, tell them. Tell them you're afraid to talk to them, and tell them you can't bear not to. It will be ok. They won't bomb you.

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Will You Let War Stop You?

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December 27-31, 2009