In places like Darfur, the western region of Sudan, where genocide and starvation run rampant, human crises move far beyond the theoretical. Recent UN estimates suggested that hundreds of thousands of people have perished due to disease and war. Tribal warfare exacerbated by competing national political interests has laid this province to waste (literally).

The most incomprehensible part of this travesty has been, by and large, that the international community has not intervened. There have been a few censures and resolutions, but no resolve to move beyond merely flexing muscle. It seems the world has forgotten Darfur’s nightmare.

I imagine Darfurians feel emotions similar to the psalmist: “O Lord, how long will You forget me? Forever?” (Psalm 13:1) When our distress and abandonment continue endlessly, our most difficult reality might be something other than the unrelenting pain. We may find that the hardship most difficult to bear is the stinging sense that, in it all, God is nowhere to be found.

“How long will You look the other way?” the psalmist pleads, pressing a devastating accusation. He is pleading for God’s help—and God looks away (v.1). Four times in this short prayer, the writer forces the question, “How long?” (vv.1-2). His raw query echoes: God, are You remotely interested in my despair? This long nightmare is killing me. How long?

Prayer is not a tame, safe, meek affair. Prayer is the courageous act of honestly giving our full self, our full emotions (whatever we have within us, noble or not) to God. Somehow, the prayerful act itself offers a balm. With little indication of change in circumstances, the psalmist concludes: God “is good to me” (v.6).

The God-encounter experienced in honest prayer reorients us to the truth that our God has never forgotten us, not for a single moment.