Psalm 119:50 This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.
In 2014, Boko Haram abducted 276 Nigerian Christian school girls. My heart was riveted to the news Maybe yours was, too. A social media campaign, #BringBackOurGirls, went viral as people across the world witnessed the horror. Although the terrorists eventually released most of the girls, a recent book chronicles the ordeal they experienced: Bring Back Our Girls: The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigeria’s Missing Schoolgirls by Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw.
The girls who refused to deny their faith and convert to Islam faced torture, deprivation and abuse. But they found both courage and comfort as they secretly whispered prayers together and memorized scripture from a smuggled Bible. God’s promises enabled them to stand through the most unimaginable circumstances these young girls would ever face. According to the authors, “Their faith provided twin anchors of identity and hope their captors were trying to erase.”
Bad things happen in a fallen world. We know that, but when we see schoolgirls punished for the sin of seeking an education, we can’t help but grieve. When we view innocent Ukrainians fleeing their homes, stripped of all they hold dear, we grieve. A wife sobs at a hospital in Mariupol as her husband dies from defending his war-torn country. And we cry, too.
How do we face such incomprehensible evil?
The testimony of the surviving Chibok schoolgirls reminds me of what the psalmist declared. In his affliction, he found comfort in God’s promises, and it gave him life. When ungodly people derided him, he remembered the word of the Lord. When evil pressed in, he sang songs acknowledging the ways of God. Songs that reinforced God’s love, power and faithfulness. Songs that brought peace to his troubled soul.
Because that’s what the word of God does.
God’s promises existed long before the pain and suffering inflicted by Islamist terrorists, and ruthless dictators like Vladmir Putin. The evil they unleash on the world cannot ultimately prevail against the faith believers have in God’s word.
The days seem to darkening; we don’t know what lies ahead. But no matter what we face, let’s not let our hope be erased. Let’s cry out to the God of comfort “#BringYourPromises.”