It’s a glorious sunrise off to our east as we cruise at 36,000 feet over Northern Sudan headed to Ethiopia.  The horizon progresses from red to orange and then yellow as the sun once more crests the Simeon Mountains.   There’s always been something about sunrises that forces me to break out in worship of the God of creation.  The beauty. The creativity.  The awesome power to create it from nothing and keep it in place for untold thousands of years.

But, this morning there is also something else on my mind.  XMA has its first trip into Sudan planned for later this year and I think about and pray for the thousands and thousands of people below me now who have lived in refugee camps for decades.  There are actually many people in these camps who came in as young children years ago and these same people are now parents and even grandparents.  Imagine, generation after generation who have known nothing but life in an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) refugee camp!  (By the way, isn’t IDP a nice, sanitary way to describe these people who have been forcefully driven from their homes to live for generations in the crowded squalor of refugee camps?)

But even as we are making plans for XMA Eye Doc in a Box eye care clinics and to show the Jesus Film in these camps violence has once again broken out between Northern and Southern Sudan.  News reports say Northern Sudan is bombing the very airstrips used to bring humanitarian aid to the refugee camps.  Until this violence settles down again there will be very little aid to the people in the camps and no XMA team to share the Good News of Jesus through word and deed with the ones who so desperately need it.

Please join me in praying for peace in Sudan, for the people effected by decades of war and for our XMA team to be able share Christ in the IDP camps.