What needs to change?

I was watching a film the other day ("Anna and the King" - the Jodie Foster version, not the musical!), and there was one scene where she was teaching a science lesson. She attempted to get a peeled, hard-boiled egg into a bottle, but the neck of the bottle was just too small. She then removed the egg, inserted a lit taper into the bottle (creating a vacuum), and popped the egg back into the neck of the bottle. The egg slipped easily into the bottle.

Simple physics experiment really.

But her comment following the experiment has stayed with me. She said "When the obstacle seems impossible, sometimes you just have to alter the climate" It was a comment on the then political difficulties facing the king of Siam, but it started me thinking.

I have read a number of online commentators in the past dew days, trying to explain the asian tsunami in terms of faith, or some form of religious meaning. A number of atheists have gone on record as saying that such tragedy proves the non-existence of God; others say that the response of people worldwide has proved that many have a compassionate heart. All I know is that God weeps, too, but has always been in the business of bringing order out of chaos, when we invite Him to do so. Maybe the "climate" that needed changing here is spiritual; maybe we needed to see a different perspective on our own problems. I am not saying that individual traumas can easily be ignored or forgotten. But sometimes we need something bigger than us, outside of us, to make us see our own situation more clearly.

Sometimes the sheer size of such devastation makes it difficult to consider anything good at all. But that is where faith comes in. It is the "evidence of things not seen" - YET. It is believing when all hope seems gone, and praying into that. It is trusting that although nations have been brought to their knees, that God can bring a seed change across the whole region, and as an infrastructure is re-built, so too can the spiritual heart of a continent. Let us pray for a harvest of souls - that as aid and compassion begin to flow, so the love behind them will generate a thirst not only for safe water, but also for the Living Water that Christ can bring.

Let us pray that the spiritual climate of Asia can be changed, and remove any obstacles that stop individuals turning to God

Pat's Thought for the Day:
What is the spiritual climate like around you? What obstacles stand in the way of God being able to move? Shine a light, and create a vacuum, that only God can fill