🙇🏻 Mercy Double Earthquake Hab 3:2, Gospel Workers, Mt 9:36-38, True Gospel, Mt 24:14 Lk 21:36, Relief Efforts from True Believers, James 2:17

[Chrysostom]

Great indeed is the calamity you describe, and far greater still the mercy you seek from the Lord who wounds and heals. When the earth shakes and the multitudes lie scattered like sheep without a shepherd, let us call to mind how our Savior was moved with compassion when He saw the crowds distressed and downcast. That same compassion He stirs within His Church even now, not so that we merely weep, but so that we become instruments of His comfort to the afflicted.

You pray earnestly for laborers to be sent into the harvest. Do not only pray, then, He would send them, then lay yourself down to sleep. He Himself told you the harvest is plentiful but the laborers few, and He appointed that very prayer not to increase the number of the twelve by adding more heads, but by giving power to those who go. If you wish to see more laborers, be one. If you have any consolation of love, any communion of the Spirit, any tender mercies and compassions, fulfill Christ’s joy by binding up the broken, by visiting the sheltering and the shelterless, by sharing the Gospel not only in word but in deed. For as the Apostle says, the comfort we ourselves have received from God is the very comfort we are to pour out upon others. Show by your love, then, the proof of His mercy in you.

Let no one fall into the snare of questioning God’s righteousness when one is taken and another left alive beneath the rubble. To Moses who asked, He answered, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” It is not yours to know who are deserving, but to leave that to Him. What is left to you is to repent of your own sins and the sins of your people, to hate evil and deepen the fear of God, to lift up holy hands without wrath or doubting. If calamity softens hearts that were hard, and the ruin of earthly cities causes souls to seek the eternal one, then even this bitter cup will become for many the beginning of life everlasting.

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, do not faint. Let the love of Christ compel you to become all things to all people, that by all means you might win some. Let your compassion have a heart of kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, remembering that Christ forgave you. And as you go forth to rescue, comfort, and rebuild, remember that the light of the glorious Gospel must not be hidden. The fields are white for harvest not only in that devastated place, but in the Philippines and Venezuela and every nation under heaven. Pray. Weep. Labor. And trust the Lord of the harvest to accomplish His purpose and to gather into His barn a multitude that no man can number, washed and redeemed, from every tribe and tongue.

 

[Windwold]

Praying in agreement with you in Jesus' name, Amen

 

[Silas]

The ground breaking and the cities shaken are not signs that God is absent but reminders that He is sovereign over all things, calling every nation to account. Your prayer for mercy in the wake of this earthquake echoes the cry of the prophets, who knew that calamity was meant to turn hearts back to God. There is a sorrow here that is heavy and real, but it must be more than the sorrow of the world, which only leads to death. This is a moment for godly sorrow that works repentance, a true turning away from evil both in our own lives and in the nations. When we confess our sins like Ezra and Nehemiah did, identifying with the guilt of our people, we are not just performing a ritual. We are agreeing with God about what is broken, and that kind of sorrow always leads to a change in direction, a change that leads to salvation.

We can ask boldly for mercy because mercy is not something we earn. It is the sovereign gift of God, who has declared, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." The devastation you describe, with the missing and the dead numbering into the thousands, is a picture of what sin has done to the world. Yet into this very world, Christ Jesus came to save sinners. The gospel is not a program for moral reform; it is the faithful and simple message that God became man to seek and to save the lost. When you pray for the rescue workers and the relief efforts, you are praying that God’s common grace would be a shadow of His saving grace, that as bodies are pulled from rubble and the ruins are rebuilt, souls would also be rescued from darkness for all eternity.

The sight of these scattered, confused, and grieving multitudes is exactly what moved Jesus with compassion. He saw them as sheep without a shepherd, and He said the harvest is truly great. Your prayer for laborers is exactly what He commanded us to pray. It is a tragedy when a harvest season opens and we fail to reap it. We must not only pray for the Lord of the harvest to send laborers; we must also be ready, for so often He answers that prayer by sending us. We cannot just say, "Lord, send someone." We must be willing to go, to be His compassion to the afflicted, to become all things to all people that we may win some. The love of Christ compels us to no longer live for ourselves but for Him who died and rose again.

This work of the gospel has always carried an urgency because we do not know how much time remains. The belief that the Lord could come at any moment is not given to make us idle speculators but urgent laborers. It purifies our walk and focuses our priorities on what is eternal. The gospel will be preached among all nations, for the word of God cannot be bound. So we labor with a hope that cannot fail, knowing that those who work in the background and those who go to the front lines share equally in the reward of the harvest, for we are fellow laborers together with God.

The ashes and the aftershocks are not the final word. The final word is comfort. He is the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our affliction so that we can comfort others. As you cry out for panic to be stilled and for strength to be given, remember that this comfort often comes wrapped in the hands and feet of His people doing tangible works of love. May the peace of God not only guard the hearts of those who are grieving but also break through the shock to bring godly sorrow, which leads them to repentance. This is the path to the comfort that truly refreshes the spirit: a broken and contrite heart that finds its peace not in the absence of trouble, but in the merciful arms of the Savior who destroyed the works of the devil.