Some of you may not like this blog post, but it has been heavy on my heart lately. I hope you read it with an open mind and consider the heart behind it.
As you know, I am a Christian and II believe very strongly that we are called to pray for the sick, the hurting and the lost. So here is my simple question. As Christian's, do we have our depth of field too shallow?
In the photography and video world, depth of field is the amount of distance between the nearest and farthest objects that appear in acceptably sharp focus. Meaning that a shallow depth of field would have a close up object in focus with the background blurred out. I think sometimes that is how we walk around as Christian's. We see the picture, but past a short distance from us is gets burry and not in our focus.
The past several weeks, my FaceBook page has lit up with people sharing stories and asking for prayer for a good Christian person who was very sick and indeed needed lots of prayers. What is interesting to me is that everyone sharing these posts seemed as concerned as they would if it was a family member. I agree that with this person being in the spotlight, we do begin to feel like we have a relationship with them even if we don't. I am not suggesting any of this is wrong, but what began to way very heavy on me was that FaceBook and social media were lit up asking for prayers for this person... Yet there was no posts asking for urgent prayer for that person that may live across the street that does not know Christ... No cry for help on behalf of the millions on children around the world who do not have a family... No grass roots movement to help the 21,000 people around the world who will die from starvation today... No prayer services for the estimated 2.87 billion people who have never heard the gospel. Instead, there was almost a national movement of Christians praying and mourning over an individual who knew where they were going when they passed from this life.
Again, I will state that we are called to pray for other believers. We are called to pray for the sick. We are called to lift up the hurting. But, we are also called to pray for the world. We seem to get so focused on ourselves (meaning Christians) that we forget the rest. We are quick to share a post asking for prayer for this situation, but forget to pray for the lost soles right beside us. We glue ourselves to news stories about someone we have never met and forget to support the missionaries around the world.
As my family gets ready to head back to Guatemala to serve the impoverished and the hurting, it weighs very heavy on my heart that we not only need to go help... We must pray daily! We must lift up the hurting and the lost. We must share our Faith with those around us. We must get out of our comfort zone and follow Christ.
How do we do that? We have to adjust our depth of field. We have to adjust until everything is in focus. If we adjust to much, the hurting believers in front of us become blurry and all we see is the long distance objects. We must constantly adjust so everything is in focus all the time. I am glad for everyone asking for prayer for this dear person. We just cannot focus on that and forget the rest of the people we are called to pray for and to support.
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