Literally every day of the year, in under a minute, a scan of the day's news will give you fodder to pray for children. Imagine the difference when millions who follow Jesus would pray daily for children, those near to us and those far away.

Not only do we adults have much to learn from the simple, trusting faith of children, but children are special to God.

Here is a report via Amnesty International and BBC of armed gangs siezing children for ransom in lawless areas in the north Central African Republic. Parents have had to pay up to US $4,000 for their children to be freed, and some have been killed.

I don't find it very easy to pray negative things even upon bad people, but I feel it's legit in cases like this that at the very least we would pray for these people's horrible activities to be thwarted, for their plans to be ruined, and for their attempts to fail.

Please pray for the safe return of these kids back to their families and homes. Pray for those who have power to use it boldly for the right things, not the wrong things. Pray for evil plans to be frustrated. Pray that people who use their power to abuse others would lose their power.

The disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."
- Matthew 18:1-6

"Baghdad truck bomb kills dozens."

The unrelenting frequency of suicide bomber attacks sometimes has me going numb to the almost daily news that yet another one has taken place.

Sometimes it feels like the media goofed up and is running yesterday's news again, because today's report sounds so familiar.

Google "suicide bomber" and you get almost 2 million pages. Only in a very fallen world would there be so much to be said so often about suicide and murder.

I try to be an empathetic person, but the act of suicide bombing has me stumped for how people can reach a place of such desperation (or brainwashing) that they believe there is nothing more effective they can possibly do than to violently end their life and many others along with them.

There are probably sincere motives, but I can't think of any constructive outcomes that are accomplished by a suicide bomber. It's a wasteful act. No cause is furthered, unless the cause goes no further than to simply inflict terror and fear as sufficient ends in themselves.

OK, I don't spend that much time trying to deconstruct suicide bombers, but I do wonder time and again, when I hear such news almost daily from several parts of the world, what can someone like me actually do about news like this?

How can we turn actions of destruction and hatred into positive outcomes?

One thought is to pray for the family members of a suicide bomber. The loss of their loved one (whatever they've been told about the heavenly reception he or she was guaranteed) has to still be incredibly painful.

As such, it's an opportunity for God to work in the lives of the perpetrator's surviving friends and family members. In the mystery of prayer, perhaps God will act in some of these peoples' lives in ways that God wouldn't have, without our prayers. Experiential evidence seems to indicate that God does sometimes respond (or withhold a response) based on the presence or absence of expectant prayer. Jesus even taught as much.

Another prayer is for God to teach us through the tragedy that just took place and came our way via the news. Would God ever decline such a prayer? Are we eager to learn the things we could learn?

Another response is to talk about it with friends with the question, "What can we learn from this and how can we change our own attitudes, behaviors, and responses to others to be more in line with what we know about God's truth?"

What disproportionate and misdirected (and even sinful) responses do we sometimes have to events and circumstances that we don't like in our lives?

Another response is that even the horrible acts of suicide bombers can inform our worship and appreciation of God's mercy, and the mystery of the freedom God gives the human race. Worship calls for humility before God, including not second-guessing how God has chosen to order things.

In my human arrogance I might find myself challenging the latitude God gives any of us, including suicide bombers, to wreak collateral havoc on other lives. But in worship I step back and acknowledge there are many things I simply don't understand, and that God is still God, and some day maybe some of these questions will be answered, or maybe they won't matter.

This is a broader issue than the narrow topic of suicide bombers. How do we stay aware of the news (much of it the same all over again daily or weekly) and not become jaded, numb, or indifferent? It's an exercise that stretches faith, no way around that.

A final thought about our response is we need to somehow have the mind in us which was also in Christ, which is to take on limitations that we don't necessarily have to; to subject ourselves to risks that are undesireable; to empathize in the extreme with those we are called to love; and to humble ourselves to the point that other peoples' lives matter more than ours do.

If we're doing this on some level, daily, it seems to me that that God will more than make up the difference in our shortcomings of how to deal with the fallen world around us.

Grace, and Peace.

Birthdays are shortlived, but it takes a whole year to get a year older.

I recently completed another (forty-something) one of these processes, and it had me thinking about a few things including how process can take its sweet time.

(Side note: I'm ripe for mid life crisis but it must be predisposed at some critical elsewhere for now. Or perhaps its first tactic is the introduction of denial. No, not possible.)

I'm in the midst of several processes. Some are just a few days or weeks long, others have a much longer cycle.

Like language, all processes have punctuation -- milestones and markers that measure their path toward some completion.

There's the process of time; punctuated by moving hands, yet it never seems to end.

There's the process of breathing; punctuated by itself. It ends eventually, but we don't mind waiting.

There's the process of cooking dinner; punctuated by enjoying it with family and friends (and the anticlimactic act of cleaning the dishes).

There's the process of enjoying live music (my memory is fresh with two recent tastes of live jazz), punctuated by surprises, special moments along the way, and the supressed disappointment when it's over, all is quiet and there will be no encores.

There's the process of catching up on laundry, which can take a couple days or more; punctuated by empty baskets (for now) and replenished drawers, if you'll pardon the pun. Laundry is a bad example of "process", it's a bit too eager in perpetuity.

For those who have the privilege of employment, there's the process of a workweek; punctuated either by the weekend (the "end") or Monday (another beginning).

There's the process of planning and completing a project. These can last for days or weeks; for me a rare few have lasted over a year. They are punctuated by accomplishments of teams of people; good and challenging surprises along the way; in the best case scenarios, there's also completion, evaluation, revision, success, acknowledgement, celebration, closure, and perhaps improvement as a new process is spun off.

There's the creative process of building a successful marriage; punctuated by anniversaries, joy, sorrow, success, failure, stages of intimacy, self- vs. other-centered living.

There's the process of raising children; punctuated by their birthdays, growth and maturity, unique expression that leads to humble appreciation for God's miraculous creativity. This may be the ultimate act of collaboration, among a team of at least three (mom, dad, creator) and hopefully more.

There's the process of self-improvement; punctuated by tradeoffs, getting better at some things while losing capacity in other areas. Nobody said improvement was perfect. ;-)

Besides these, what other processes do Christians experience?

I'm not talking about nominal Christians who identify in general (in name) with the church, but rather those who try to focus the center of their lives on following Jesus, over the long haul.

Here are a few other faith-intensive processes:

There's the process of worship; punctuated by every time we regain an acute awareness of God's presence in our lives and our world. This might happen in corporate worship on a Sunday, but much more ideally it happens almost continually. It's the process of remembering who God is and who we are.

There's the process of reconciliation; it's repetitive punctuation (dot dot dot)... as an ongoing thing: being reconciled back to that for which we were intended; back to what adds up correctly.

There's the process of reformation; punctuated by moments in which we are reformed from that which has fallen, and instead we are conformed to Christ.

There's the process of mission; punctuated by God's power and by human collaboration, in spite of its gross weakness, to holistically address the needs of God's creation like Jesus did.

There's the process of redemption; very onoging and punctuated by God's grace and patience. (Is patience a form of punctuation?)

There's the process of obedience; very ongoing and punctuated by falling short, and mercy, and forgiveness.

There's the process of discipleship; teaching, shaping and conforming all things and people back into the image of what God had in mind from the start.

The interesting thing about most faith processes is not their punctuation so much as their indefinite, ongoing, incomplete, long-haul nature.

Along with the Holy Spirit, the global church has not yet worked itself out of a job. The reconciliation of all creation is not fully realized in our world. Sin is not abolished, and apparently it won't be this side of our human lifespans. The poor will always be with us - as an opportunity, not a handicap or a fatality.

The kingdom of heaven seems to be a process rather than a destination or even a cycle.

It's a process of advancing daily toward the goal of the prayer, "Your Kingdom Come."

As you get a year older, what processes does God have going in your life?

"My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you've been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You're deeply rooted in him. You're well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving."

- Colossians 2:6-7 (MSG)

Forty years ago today, 200 airplanes took off from Israel and surprised the Middle East and the world with an attack and brief war that was over 6 days later with a decisive victory for Israel.

Here's an interesting article on this by Jonathan Kay in the National Post.

Summarizing a couple points...

As Israel remembers this anniversary today, it must be bittersweet. The victory of the Six-Day War put Israel into a position of dominance and almost colonial overlord status among its neighbors, making it an occupying power until this day over towns and refugee camps of mostly poor people, mostly Arabs.

Then and now this has fueled the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and militancy in the Middle East and other parts of the world with a legitimacy that it probably would not have otherwise enjoyed.

Second, the decisive war and victory 40 years ago doesn't soften the sobering current reality, the enmity of the Arab world and other Islamic countries toward Israel, and growing threats like the ones from Iran, working toward nuclear capabilities, and whose president recently declared, "the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed by the hands of the children of Lebanon and Palestine."

The Arab world has never lived this war down. I don't think any culture takes a favorable view toward being humiliated, and Arabs are no exception. As an American citizen, I'm often aware that the United States' long track record of largely one-sided support for Israel has aligned it on the receiving end of much of this enmity.

What should be the outlook of the Church - the Body of Christ - toward Israel today and the serious ongoing conflict in the Middle East? We might have as many answers to this question as the number of Christians we ask. There doesn't seem to be a consensus in "the church" today about this.

The thing that probably surprises me most is the tendency of quite a number of Christians to somehow condone actions and policies toward human beings that are unjust from any perspective that Jesus seemed to teach or demonstrate, justifying such actions and policies by an eschatological view that Israel is God's chosen nation and will be politically restored, and therefore "anything goes" to help God achieve this.

This perspective seems to imply a reverted emphasis toward a singularly Old Testament view of the Old Covenant at the exclusion of the New Testament and New Covenant -- that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, the worldwide Church is the Body of Christ, and the New Jerusalem will come down from heaven, not be rebuilt as we ever knew it on earth.

Whew, that's a mouthful, and a mind-ful.

I want to know what other Christians think today about this as we think about Israel's delicate presence among its enemies.

What do YOU think?