Baptist World Aid is planning to develop a web-page for their website which will be a page of resources for churches to use for the National Day of Mourning. We would like to draw from our Baptist family and utilise the talents and gifts within our churches to build this resource page for our pastors and churches.

Would you have any resources (songs, poems, reflections, songs/hymns/choruses, prayers, liturgies, Bible verses, ideas on how to decorate the church, personal stories of encouragement etc.), or know of people I could contact, that we could place on the website for use by churches? If so, would you be able to forward any resources to me as soon as possible so that we can place them on the web-page?

Your assistance in this venture is greatly appreciated.

Rod replied:

You could consider these:

1. See http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/h/y/hymnprom.htm

2. See http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/p/r/prayer4c.htm

3. From Bruce D. Prewer, Jesus Our Future (Adelaide: Openbook Publishers, 1998) p. 62:

Eternal God, we fear you yet we adore you! We fear a love so daring and puzzling that you permit evil and suffering to abound in your universe. We adore a love so determined and costly that you bore in a human body the full agony of this world. With Job we shout our protest. With John we say there is no greater love than this. Eternal God, the ever-present victim and victor, take both our fear and our faith and let them serve you today and declare your glory forever. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

4. John Piper, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God (second edition; Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah, 2000) 67:

“Do we charge God with wrong when we say that [God is somehow responsible for the destruction of thousands of lives by drowning because of the storms and hurricanes and tornadoes and monsoons and typhoons which God has ‘brought forth from his storehouses’ over the centuries]? Might it not be Satan who makes destructive wind blow? This is a good question. The answer is not simple. I don’t mean the answer is hard to find. I mean that the answer is complex. Satan does have great power in this world to do harm … We know that he can cause sickness (Luke 13.16; Acts 10:38) and, since he is called a ‘murderer from the beginning’ (John 8:44), we may infer that he can indeed kill, whether by sickness or by stirring up people to kill or in other ways as well. It is hard not to see his hand in the tragic deaths, for example, of missionary children. I remember receiving a phone call that the son of a missionary friend was killed in a car accident. Another missionary family in Cameroon lost two of their three children in one day to malaria within days after coming home on furlough. And such stories are multiplied almost every day.”

5. Adapted from a “South African affirmation,” in The Iona Community Worship Book (1991) 72:

It is not true that when our world suffers we must accept inhumanity, poverty, death and destruction.

This is true: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

It is not true that we are simply victim of the powers of evil that seek to rule the world.

This is true: In the Psalms we read, “Be still and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations.”

It is not true that violence and hatred shall have the last word.

This is true: The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Hope this helps.

Regards, Rod Benson