I wanted to write a story about Thanksgiving today, friends. However, after what I saw this morning, I can’t really write about turkeys and pies.

I ended my brief hiatus from Facebook this weekend, and have been enjoying a variety of thankfulness posts which was nice to come back to. However, this morning, my friend posted a video of a hospital in Aleppo, Syria. A little boy was bundled up in a blanket holding an oxygen mask up to his face, asking the nurse, “Am I going to die, miss?” He was probably elementary school age.

He had breathed in chlorine gas after watching planes fly overhead, like pretty much any other child would do. How many times has your kid looked up excitedly to see a plane soaring through the sky? This poor little boy thought he was going to die all because he did something a multitude of children would do on any given day.

That isn’t even the worst part, folks. While that boy was getting treatment, the hospital he was in was bombed. The hospital was one of the few childrens’ hospitals left. Little tiny babies had to be grabbed out of their incubators and moved quickly. Nurses cried as they held these premature babies in their hands, hugging one another in their terror.

I don’t know who did the bombing — it wasn’t clear from the video. It could’ve been the Syrian government; it could’ve been the rebels; or it could’ve been Russia. At the end of the day, I guess it doesn’t really matter. Death and destruction remain death and destruction regardless of whose hand it is under.

This horrible evil of war is like a machine that feeds on anything in its path — and little babies are being killed and maimed because of it. In what world is that OK?

A friend recently asked me why God hasn’t just gotten rid of evil yet. My answer was that He did, He is and He is going to. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty'” as it says in Revelation 1:8.

Evil has been defeated already — we’re just watching it play out. But it kills me. It kills me to see the children suffer and I cried all morning, wishing I hadn’t sent my kid to school because I just wanted to hug her.

Wishing that evil was gone out of the world, and those children were at home playing instead of suffering.

After watching the video, I was reminded of the song, “My Deliverer” by Rich Mullins.

“Through a dry and thirsty land, water from the Kenyon heights,

pours itself out of Lake Sangra’s broken heart.

There in the Sahara winds, Jesus heard the whole world cry

for the healing that would flow from his own scars —

The world was singing,

My deliverer is coming, my deliverer is standing by, my deliverer is coming, my deliverer is standing by.

He will never break his promise, he has written it upon the sky.”

I feel like the world is crying out for healing, for hope, for light and for compassion. Much of the world is in the throes of evil, stuck in the depths of despair and facing a bleak environment that is starved of any goodness. There isn’t much I can do when it comes to those who are suffering so badly. There isn’t much I can do for those children in Aleppo.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t try. I can get on my knees and pray for their protection. I can pray for peace. I can pray for understanding, love and compassion to flood the world. I don’t care who you are – tonight, you are my brother or my sister and I am praying for you.

Friends, as we gather around the Thanksgiving dinner table Thursday to share in fellowship, family and a full meal – as we give thanks for all we have and our blessings, let us also spare a prayer for those in the world who are suffering. For those who are in pain and who are in the throes of evil.

The world is crying out for healing – and I believe we can help.