Reasons for hope in Burma
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
There are reasons to hope. Amid the mind-numbing wreckage, amid all the heartache and tragedy in Myanmar, there are reasons not to collapse in despair. Yes, the devastating cyclone and the even more devastating tidal wave that followed have left a death toll already in the thousands. But, no, that did not snuff out every spark of courage in a land where, it turns out, courageous hearts are still plentiful.
Neighbor helping neighbor to survive is commonplace right now. At this writing, there are tentative signs that the military leaders of this Southeast Asian nation—leaders who usually follow intensely isolationist practices and spurn international aid in times of crisis—are, at least reluctantly, opening up somewhat to receive such aid.
And there are reasons to hope that go deeper and are less eye-catching, reasons that don’t make for headlines but do make for healing transformations. Those reasons have to do with the spiritual resources that are right now available and that can’t be walled off by even the severest of isolationist policies. These spiritual resources have a way of pole vaulting over political barriers and cutting through bureaucratic snarls. They have a way of reaching the scene of tragedy even faster than the fastest of conventional relief efforts.
That’s one of the beauties of prayer. It has a way of being there, of traveling as fast as thought. And when that prayer is suffused with some sense of the Almighty’s all-encompassing care and all-embracing love, it tends to bring hope to where hope seemed nonexistent. It tends to foster comfort and help broken families, perhaps now reeling with grief, glimpse that healing is possible. Healing is real.
The Psalmist, as if foreseeing the challenge of today, once wrote, “The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves.” But a bit farther along the Psalmist adds, “He [God] maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.” This calming, storm-stilling power of God is needed now. It is not too late to know this.
It’s the very right time to know, to realize in whatever degree one can, that the God who is divine Mind—and knows His creation to be benign—brings His hope, His calm, His peace, His intelligent healing power to just where they are most needed. To know such spiritual facts is to pray. To pray is to make a meaningful difference, right when meaningful differences are most needed.
So, there’s a choice for each person to make, each person who might be thousands of miles from the scene of tragedy. Do they slump into cynicism? Do they give themselves over to indifference concerning the plight of a people they’ve never met? Or, do they marshal the spiritual resources that rekindle hope?
Right when mindless violence rips through a region, right then is the time to prayerfully assert that pure Mind is on scene. To glimpse the presence and power of Mind is to get a sighting on the same intelligent force Christ Jesus drew on when he calmed the storm at sea. It’s the same force he as well as Old Testament prophets before him drew on to heal broken bodies and lives. That healing power of Mind remains undiminished today. To realize this in prayer is to provide a kind of spiritual underpinning to the relief efforts that are now underway. To realize this is also to provide spiritual aid even before other relief efforts get there.
Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered a sure and scientific basis for hope and healing, once wrote, “The prophets, Jesus, and the apostles, demonstrated a divine intelligence that subordinates so-called material laws; and disease, death, winds, and waves, obey this intelligence” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, p. 23). Know that in prayer, and you are adding to the solution. You are contributing one more reason to hope.
Fostering hope:
Science and Health
446:20
King James Bible
Ps. 93:3
Ps. 107:29