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During the past few days most of my work has been done from home: raising funds and prayer support through e-mail and calling or texting colleagues on the field to their cell phones.

(How helpful cell phones have been to us these past few days. Add this to your list of famous last words: "I will never buy a cell phone." Ajith Fernando, 2002.)

Staying at home should have made having my devotions easier. Not so! Every time I sit down to pray or read my Bible, there seem to be so many other urgent demands that call for my attention. It has been a tough battle for me. How much tougher it would be for those on the field! Indeed God's grace is sufficient. He will not strike us down if we miss a day or two of unhurried time with him. But this can only be an exception. Never the rule.

Perhaps because of the urgency of the crisis I am finding that praying is easier than Bible reading.

We must fight, with God-aided resolve, and win the battle for Bible reading.

I do not know why it is, but it seems that absorption in social emergencies often reduces one's cutting edge in personal morality. Otherwise good aid workers will use aid money indiscriminately and commit fraud.

Does absorption with social morality often result in the neglect of personal morality? It seems to be so.

Perhaps, because we find it so difficult to be rounded individuals, when we concentrate on one aspect of life we tend neglect the other. Lethargy often hits busy people and they neglect their personal life.

We should follow the same principles of personal spiritual and financial accountability that we adopt in ordinary life during emergency situations too.

How sad that many Christians today have no one to whom they are spiritually accountable. No one who asks them about their family life, their professional life, their devotional life, their money spending and their sexual purity.

May those on the field be checked by the knowledge that they will have to report about their behavior to someone.

How sad that for many of us, the humiliation of sharing with another human being is a greater deterrent to sin that the knowledge that the absolutely holy God sees what we do.

Let's face it. We are weak people who often act like idiots. May we find ways of keeping our lives pure that takes into account our folly and irrationality. If we are such fools as to act as if exposure to humans is scarier than exposure to God, at least may the prospect of exposure to humans keep us from sin.

I am praying that this crisis may help my colleagues appreciate afresh other segments of the body of Christ and also of society at-large.

We evangelicals are so individualistic that we have a very weak theology of the body of Christ. We have so far sent Youth for Christ staff and volunteers to work for World Vision, LEADS, the Salvation Army, a Roman Catholic Refugee Camp, the Anglican Church, and a home (without a religious affiliation) for retarded children.

I am praying especially that our YFC folk would admire what these other people are doing and find joy in it.

In body theology, there is this habit of delighting over what others are doing. As joy is so basic to Christianity, we should always be yearning for opportunities to rejoice over God's creation.

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December (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48