Needing God's Intervention

In today's first reading, 1 Kings 19: 9b-11, 14-21, 31-35a, 36, Hezekiah, king of Judah, receives a letter from Sennacherib, king of Assyria, reminding him that Assyria has destroyed any city or nation into whose territory they enter and Judah will be no exception.   Hezekiah takes the letter from the messengers, goes to the Temple, lays out the letter to the Lord and says to the Lord:  "O Lord, God of Israel, enthroned upon the cherubim!  You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made the heavens and the earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and listen!  Open your eyes, O Lord, and see!  Hear the words of Sennacherib which he sent to taught the living God. Truly, o Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands, and cast their gods into the fire; they destroyed them because they were not gods, but work of human hands, wood and stone. Therefore, O Lord, our God, save us from the power of this man, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God."

WOW! the wisdom, faith, and surrender of Hezekiah!  Like Hezekiah, you and I know that God is God alone. There is no other. Do we, like Hezekiah, when faced with threats of destruction, go immediately to God? Do we spread the situation out before the Lord, knowing that God is listening? As we listen to the news each night, each week, each month, do we go to the Lord and spread out  before him the issues  that threaten to destroy earth by poisons being put into it because we want
to make billions of dollars in profits? Do we take to the Lord the fact that animals, fishes, and birds of the air are becoming extinct as the results of the air and the water and the vegetation needed for survival being depleted? Do we spread before the Lord the legislative efforts to deprive individuals of their basic human rights to secure jobs that enable them to sufficiently provide for their families' right to education, to housing, to adequate food, to freedom from violence by the very people who are to protect them?  Do we spread before the Lord the fact that persons seeking asylum from  life-threatening situations in their own countries are being sent back to face abuse and even death?  Do we spread before the Lord the ways in which the basic human rights of persons of color, of other sexual orientations and of different beliefs are being challenged in our courts?

What would my list, your list, look like that we take to the Lord in prayer each day on behalf of a suffering, wounded world, a world as in danger of destruction as was the country and the people of Israel. The ways in which we are threatened may be different from real just the same! Are we seeking God's help? Remember, He is waiting for us to be honest with Him about what is going on in the world, not covering it up, and not trying to "fix it" alone--that is beyond our ability. We need God's intervention!