A question that has been sitting with me for a while.

A message came in from a friend today.

A pastor. Persecuted. Hostile territory. Please pray.

But something bothered me mid-thought — not skepticism, not cynicism. Just memory. Because I have received this same message before.

And before that.

And before that.

The subject of our prayers has a pattern.

Always a pastor. Always a church. Always our people.

And I started to wonder: when was the last time I received a message that said — millions of children are starving in Sudan. Please pray. A village was massacred in Myanmar. Please pray. Mothers in Haiti are watching their children die. Please pray.

Not because they are Christians. Just because they are human.

When did we stop seeing that as a reason to pray?

* * *

I am not saying we should not pray for persecuted believers. We absolutely should. The church suffering is our family suffering, and we must never stop feeling that.

But I am asking a harder question.

Have we built such a tight circle around ourselves that the suffering of the world outside it barely registers?

Have we cocooned ourselves so deeply in our own “isms” — our tribe, our theology, our prayer chains, our church networks — that compassion for the human family at large has quietly dried up?

Because if it has — that is not Christianity. That is something else wearing its clothes.

* * *

The Samaritan did not ask what religion the man was.

He saw a beaten man on the road. He stopped. He helped. He paid out of his own pocket. He did not check his tribal affiliations first.

And Jesus did not tell that story to a pagan. He told it to a lawyer who wanted to know who qualified as his neighbour. He told it to a religious man. A man of the Book.

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”— Luke 10:36–37

Go and do likewise.

Not: go and do likewise, but only for those who share your confession. Not: go and do likewise, after you have verified their church membership.

Just — go and do likewise.

* * *

Jesus touched lepers nobody else would touch.

He stopped for a Roman centurion’s servant — a foreigner, a soldier of the occupying force. He healed ten lepers and only one came back to thank him, and that one was a Samaritan. A half-breed. A theological enemy.

Jesus did not withhold the healing because the man’s doctrine was wrong.

He fed five thousand people who were hungry. Not five thousand believers who had signed a statement of faith. Just — people. Hungry people. And he had compassion on them.

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.— Matthew 9:36

Harassed. Helpless. That was enough. That was the whole qualification.

* * *

Salt does not only preserve the things it likes.

“You are the salt of the earth,” Jesus said. Not the salt of the church. Not the salt of the saved. The earth.

Salt works by going into the thing that needs preserving. It gets into the wound. It gets into the meat. It does not sit in a pristine shaker on a table, only available to people who know the right prayer.

Salt that stays in the shaker is useless. Jesus said so himself.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”— Matthew 5:13

I wonder sometimes if we have lost our saltiness. Not our doctrine. Not our attendance. Not our prayer meetings. But our saltiness — that quality that means we go where the rot is, we enter the pain of the world, we make a difference to people who never asked to be part of our circle.

* * *

Amos was not gentle about this.

He watched Israel become very good at religion — festivals, offerings, worship songs — while trampling on the poor and ignoring the suffering around them. And God, speaking through Amos, said something that should make every comfortable, church-going person uncomfortable.

“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me… But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”— Amos 5:21, 24

God was not impressed by the quality of their worship. He was watching what they did on the other six days. He was watching who they prayed for — and who they did not.

* * *

James asked a question that has never stopped being relevant.

Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?— James 2:15–16

Now extend that. Suppose a mother in a war zone — not a Christian, not anyone you know, just a mother — is watching her children starve. And we ignore it and then we send another message about the pastor who needs prayer.

What is moving in you?

* * *

I am not trying to make anyone feel guilty. I am trying to ask what I am asking myself.

What have I become?

Am I a disciple of the man who wept over Jerusalem — a city that rejected him — or have I become something smaller? Something that only feels pain for the pain of its own kind?

Jesus wept over people who were about to reject him. He prayed for people who were nailing him to a cross. He told his followers to pray for their enemies — not as a spiritual discipline, but because those enemies were also people God loved.

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”— Matthew 5:44–45

God’s sun does not rise only over the saved. His rain does not fall only on the faithful. His compassion is wider than our categories.

And maybe ours should be too.

Final Point

So yes — pray for the persecuted pastor. Please do. That matters.

But also pray for the child soldier in Congo who never chose that life. Pray for the family under rubble in Gaza. Pray for the woman fleeing a country that has forgotten she is human. Pray for the starving, the tortured, the displaced — the ones who will never show up on a church prayer chain because no one in the chain knows their name.

They are harassed. They are helpless.

That was always enough for Jesus.

It should be enough for us.

If you found this worth sitting with, share it with someone who is also asking the hard questions.