A Devotional Thought From Jeremiah

Moab is destroyed: her little ones have caused a cry to be heard.     Jeremiah 48:4

                On the very day I read this verse in my devotions, TV news reported and showed video of a five-year-old Syrian girl being rescued from the rubble of an airstrike in a city in Syria. She is just one of those rescued amidst the destruction of the Syrian Civil War. The children, whether anyone can hear them or not, set up a cry in the tragedy of war. “Abba, daddy, papa, I’m over here. I’m buried in the stones. I can’t get out. Come and get me. Save me. Hold me. Keep me safe.” There’s weeping and wailing, and crying and praying. On another report on the news that day you could actually hear wailing in the background of a cell phone video, it may have been disconsolate children.

                This news story in a way hearkens back to the judgment of Moab. The Chaldean military of Nebuchadnezzar swooped in crushing the country, breaking it down, destroying the bridges and killing people, making a desolation. They did this without the missile firepower of modern warfare being used in Syria today. It was hand-to-hand, person-to-person, intentional arson, face-to-face stabbing, spearing, trampling, and through it all the wailing cry of children whose parents were dead or enslaved, children who had been burned in the fire, and buried alive in the rubble.        

                Wherever there is war with its merciless destruction, raping, pillaging, enslavement, the children set up a cry. But the killers kill without sympathy, the blood of the embattled and executed stains the earth, the bodies litter the ground, and the children weep, and wail, and cry for themselves, their land, and the world. Moab is destroyed. Wherever the hellishness of war explodes the children cry.