Pray for peacemakers

The first reading from the second book of Kings 19 is about King Sennacherib and the Assyrians. It is a fascinating story about the King sending a message to Hezekiah, the king of Judah, advising him not to let the God of Israel deceive him into thinking that God will save him because the Assyrians have conquered every other nation. Hezekiah takes the letter from Sennacherib and goes up to the temple and spreads out the message before the God of Israel, as though he is giving God a chance to also read the letter. Eventually, the prophet Isaiah comes and tells the King of Judah that Sennacherib will not enter Jerusalem. Considering the power of the Assyrians, it is hard to believe that they can hold back this mighty army. But the people of Judah didn’t have to rely on their army. Instead, the Assyrian army was struck down by a plague that killed so many of their soldiers, that the Assyrians pulled out and went back home to Nineveh. Ancient peoples saw God’s hand in all events of history. So, it was the hand of the Lord and not just a plague that killed all these Assyrian soldiers and saved Judah and Jerusalem from defeat and destruction. It takes a peculiar kind of faith to see God’s hand at work in the events of history. It is a faith that does not give way to fatalism, as though there is little we can do when powerful forces, whether armies or plague or climate change, are at work. No, we never give up the challenge of bringing warring nations to peace conferences or powerful nations to climate conferences because we believe that God is at work in the efforts of peacemakers and ecological activists to save lives and to protect our global environment.