Perception of another's stress, encouragement & prayer.

 

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake  and tsunami struck on Friday, killing thousands and leaving more than 500,000 people homeless amid freezing temperatures and aftershocks.  And then the serious problems of the Fukushima Power Plant.

Does one individual’s sympathy truly cover the 500,000 homeless people in Japan?  In all honesty, no.  Every time we see family searching lists of those unaccounted for, our hearts lurch in compassion.  Again, we sigh true sighs, but how do we have hearts of compassion for so many when , at times, we don’t manage to support those near to us, in prayer and encouragement.   But this is for another post.

My question today is:  on what grounds do I assess another’s crisis?  Not just as an exercise, but to inform my prayer support and words of encouragement to my Christian and church family in the midst of stress? 

In the assessment of another’s stress or  crisis, do I:

1. evaluate as an alarmist or as the stiff-upper lip-kind and criticise the different?
2. have the necessary information, and do I love enough to start imagine what the crisis is like, pray and communicate encouragement?
3. have a wider insight into this hardship which also impacts those close the immediate sufferers and do I pray and communicate encouragement?
4. form an opinion on grounds of surface knowledge, fragments of news, with no or little understanding about the outworking of huge events in another’s life?
5. hang back and  wait to see how the crisis develops before I pray and communicate encouragement?
6. judge another’s crisis on grounds of how I would deal with it and maybe be less motivated to pray and communicate encouragement?

Our dear children Michael, Isabelle and their 4 year-old Josie and 20 month-old Evie, together with many Germany families, left their homes in Tokyo. 5 days after the 9.0-magnitude quake on Friday 11 March.   The earthquake was momentous to countless people and also to our children – and as their parents, it was our honour to be constantly on the other side of the email-link.

Today I ask myself this question:
How do I measure another’s crisis and do I pray and communicate encouragement effectively?   Or do I in effect say: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”   Does my evaluation of their situation minimise my perception of  hardship and thus minimise my caring love?     Many of our friends have been truly wonderfully supportive by means of  face-book encouragements and emails – to you: thank you!

In the first place, let us pray for the grief-stricken in the tsunami area and for every Christian’s love and outreach with deep care and the good news. For families - for everyone!   And only then, pray for the people in Japan who have to make the wisest decision about their location for their family - if they have such a choice.

Here are some of the issues many have to deal with as they weigh up the options as on Thursday 17th March 2011 in regard to the Fukushima Nuclear Plant and the infrastructure of Tokyo and this part of Japan.

1. The experts themselves are uncertain.
2. Living with the lack of assurance that the power plant problems are solved.
3. What would a panic rush look like in a 35 million city metropolis, like Tokyo?
4. There are varying perceptions of the greatness of the danger.
5. For objective reporting. Stock markets staged large swings, reflecting the depth of anxiety world-wide. "Every investment decision is made through the prism of what is going on in Japan,"
6. It’s difficult to make a decision not knowing the worst scenario.  This is not being pessimistic, but in order not to over or under-estimate a situation, rather than being fear-driven.
7. Some have claimed that the Japanese government has a history of obfuscating and playing down crises.  It is well known that the Tokyo Electric Power Co has given false information in the past.  Tepco in 2002 admitted to falsifying data, including safety tests, dating back to the early 1990s and including records at the Fukushima plant.
8. The Union of Concerned Scientists, which considers itself a nuclear-safety watchdog group, Edwin Lyman said "there's clearly an erratic quality to the information coming out from the Japanese," which may indicate "they don't know what's going on."
9. Japan has a bit of a history of complacent and bureaucratic reactions to crises. Japan can be a place where bad news is avoided, or played down.  (Some doctors still may not tell a patient that he has cancer or explain what's in a particular treatment.)
10. Here are another 2 conflicting opinions and they both belong to the same person! The European Union's energy chief, Guenther Oettinger, also declared the Fukushima Daiichi site "effectively out of control." A spokeswoman for Mr. Oettinger later said the commissioner's remarks reflected his own personal views, and weren't based on privileged information.
11. Conflicting ratings. Japan rates its growing nuclear crisis at four on a scale of seven, but France's Nuclear Safety Authority said the disaster now equated to a six, ranking it second only in gravity to Chernobyl.