Prayer for South Sudan

Largely due to a sluggish economy, I’ve had some extra time on my hands recently and spent a good deal of it reading books, among these Radical by David Platt. One of the challenges David Platt gave in the book is to pray for the entire world in a year, using the Operation World prayer guide. It takes me a few minutes a day. I pray for whatever country or countries come up each day, learn a few new things and obey a command Jesus gave us.

Thursday’s country was the newly-formed South Sudan. Thursday morning I prayed for South Sudan. Thursday evening, Samaritan’s Purse notified me that a refugee camp in South Sudan was bombed Thursday, perhaps right around the time when I was praying.

Remarkably, initial reports indicated no injuries in a camp of 23,000 refugees. Of four bombs dropped, one failed to detonate on a schoolhouse, and two landed at the fringe of the camp. The fourth landed in the marketplace.

I spent my share of time Thursday rehearsing the typical questions about what I should be doing with my unscheduled time and wondering whether I missed a turn somewhere. The end of Thursday brought a hint of encouragement in the form of a failed bombing a continent away. Maybe, because of tough economic times, I read a book that led me to pray, and God used my prayers to protect refugees in South Sudan.