WE STOPPED A TSUNAMI TODAY!!!!! Is what I wanted to shout from the facebook podium on Friday. It started, we prayed and it stopped. I think, that is remarkable on biblical proportions.
Predictions put the entire Pacific Rim at risk, low-lying pacific islands were going to be submerged, Hawaii swamped and California, my homeland, was going to get hit hard.
I thought of happy days strolling around LA’s waterfront; Venice, Marina Del Ray…and realized what a 6ft serge in sea level would do. I had seen it before. I was there after the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004. I walked streets inland where the water mark on the buildings was well above my head, I stood on the Ocean front were townships had once stood and where there was nothing now but sand. I was watching the pictures live pouring of Japan, the horror. It had to stop and I knew we could stop it.
We saw it happen last year with figi and previously with California. So we knew this time, if we prayed, we could stop an ocean-wide wave carrying the power of multiple atomic bombs. It sounded crazy, except if you’ve seen it stopped before by prayer, prayer is the most obvious reaction to take.
After all if God can hold back a sea to let people cross on dry land, He could hold back an Ocean and preserve the dry land.
So we prayed. Prayer shouts were going up from friends all over the world. We knew the drill: the wave must stop and peace must reign over the Pacific.
I could see as we united with heaven and great angels were placed in the path of the serge, they took the impact, the wave halved and halved again in power and size.
Buoy readings across the Pacific were reporting back the diminishing wave, blowing every prediction out of the water. It’s power was dissipating before our eyes. What could have been unmitigated disaster fizzled out, I believe, under the power of us, the rulers of earth uniting with Heaven to create peace on earth and goodwill to all people.
I thought all this, but didn’t shout it from the facebook podium. It felt crass. In light of the horrific toll the Tsunami had already taken on Japan, celebrating a victory for the rest of the Pacific, felt like celebrating a healing in the middle of a cancer ward.
Today, with Sky News playing in the background, I’m re-thinking. It may still be crass. Amongst news of radioactive waste, food and energy shortages, grief, destruction and global economic panic, remembering the wave stopped can feel irrelevant and insensitive.
But, I’m remembering, that’s what we do. Where I come from we celebrate healing in the middle of cancer wards, we grow out legs in front of wheel-chair users, people with hearing aids heal eardrums. And we celebrate every victory.
Where I come from we celebrate every miracle, even surrounded by great need; because it’s the celebration of one miracle that causes it to be repeated. The stories of divine intervention and cooperation with heaven lift our eyes to possibility, to hope. It restores a big picture, that there is good in the world and not only suffering. But beyond that we know, that telling the stories of what God has done, releases the power for the miracles to be repeated.
It is irresponsible to not to remember what He has done, when winds are sweeping radioactive material into the atmosphere. We need to know we can stop the winds like we stopped the wave. We need to gather courage that prayer works and celebrate the victories as they come. Because if we don’t, we may just sink beneath the waves of bad news. For Japan’s sake, for our sake, we need celebrate the power of prayer and the power of our God.
Finally it reminds us to stand up and be counted. It reminds us that we were assigned to rule this world and bring peace to the earth. If we don’t know how we effect the world, we will sit stare at the TV instead of change what we are seeing.
I would never have told that wave to stop, if I hadn’t heard of it being done before. We need to celebrate the victories so that we are encouraged to do it again.
Celebrate what we did with God and then pray that the winds will change.
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