Our upstairs neighbors were driving me nuts the other night.
I turned off the TV, and when I tried to go to sleep it sounded like a herd of elephants was stomping around and running from one side of the room to the other above me. It was incredibly annoying, but I was glad that at least it was above our room and not our daughter's.
The next night, though, two loud thuds woke her up twice in the first two hours she was asleep for the night. I could feel my annoyance rising as I held her and shushed her back to sleep for the second time.
I felt like it was petty, but I knew that I could pray about the noise. God cares about even the little things in our lives. And I did pray about it, but it also made me think about an article in my Voice of the Martyrs magazine that was about the Christians that live in North Korea. It is estimated that 30,000 Christians are currently in concentration camps in the country, and one story said that a survivor told how often Christians have their mouths filled with gravel so they can't cry out when they are beaten to death.
Starving, beaten, forced to endure the elements while performing brutal labor --- these Christians have a life more horrible than I could ever imagine. Once called the "Jerusalem of the East," North Korea was actually a thriving Christian region in the early 1900s, with 2,000 or more churches. However, the Kim family's dictatorship now considers all religions, other than Juche --- which is worshipping the Kim family --- as illegal. Christians are treated as enemies of the state.
So, I decided that I would pray for the North Korean persecuted Christians while I sat and rocked our daughter back to sleep.
I can't say I'm not going to get annoyed again at the noise above us, but I can say, I think that it will be a constant reminder of the Christians around the world who are suffering right at this moment. And that noise will be a call to pray for them and maybe think more about the positives in my life instead of the negative.
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