watch and pray...

I should be packing up my stuff right now so we can get going on the last day of our Door County adventure (which has been so far pretty awesome!). But instead I'm watching the live coverage of the Chilean Miner Rescue on cnn.com. This is incredible to see and almost hard to believe. I can't imagine spending two and a half months trapped in one small section of mine half a mile underground. I can't imagine being raised or lowered through a tiny hole for 15 minutes. I can't imagine being a family member of one of those men. And, until late last night, I couldn't imagine watching something like this on TV or the internet. It's crazy.

And all I keep hearing in my head is the song from Taize... "stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray, watch...and pray..."

I imagine that has been the prayer of the miners, too--to not be forgotten, to not be given up on, to have people remain and pray. (I know that's not how Jesus used the words, but the way Jesus used them is not the way many of us use them anyway, even when we are not in crisis...)

And now it's my prayer--that we will continue to watch and to pray until all are free, whether from mines or from abusive relationships or from literal slavery or from addiction or from bullying or from illness or from anything else that binds us.