Silent Horror; Quiet Hope

I awoke to this. It gave me a pain in the pit of my stomach. I don't know if it's because I saw this first thing in the morning, or because it was so terrifying, or due to the obvious contrast with my easy lifestyle. But this upset me! I get regular updates from Voice of the Martyrs. The following is an excerpt from them--perhaps made more apropos on a Sunday given to worship! . . .

The news of the Nigerian massacre in March 2010 was horrifying. More than 500 of our Christian brothers and sisters — 80 percent of them women and children — in three villages were slaughtered in one night!

Days later, "Dr. Kim," VOMedical director, walked among the rubble of burned-out churches and viewed the sites of mass graves in northern Nigeria. Immediately, Dr. Kim began caring for the wounded and comforting the survivors, reassuring the Nigerian Christians that Christians in the United States and around the world had NOT forgotten them in their time of suffering.

Dr. Kim's firsthand accounts of the massacre's aftermath are sobering:

In more than three years of providing medical service for persecuted Christians for VOM, this is the first time that the word 'carnage' comes to mind. This is beyond anything I have seen in my 33 years of medicine, including doing autopsies and working in emergency rooms. We found out that in one village we visited there were only 20 or 30 survivors in the entire village.

CLICK HERE to read Dr. Kim's full report and WATCH a VIDEO REPORT about these attacks and to learn how you can support VOMedical.

But amid the suffering, Dr. Kim also found hope:

It was amazing when we were allowed to worship with the believers. Even with all the death and destruction around them, they were praising the Lord for his goodness and mercy. The service was held in the village square, complete with charred, burned-out buildings in the background.

VOM began VOMedical to help believers such as these. We wanted to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ, rushing to the aid of Christians injured as a result of persecution.

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And help they have! Praise the Lord for VOM. And we certainly praise the Lord for the way in which worship of the true God is not curtailed by such evil savagery! So, I close out by bowing before the eternal wisdom of God to allow such evil to exist and even persist in the world. It is not in man to understand the mind of the Lord. 
  
We sometimes have simply to sit back and wonder, and perhaps put our hand over our mouth . . . and say nothing. Both excessive sorrow and unbridled joy seem beyond us on such occasions. 

NOTE: I just read this after posting. First words I saw!

"Wealth brings many new friends, but a poor man is deserted by his friend" (Prov. 19:4).