THIS IS A CODE BLUE!

by Patti Ediger

The computer screen was filled with small squares, each containing a small smiling head. We were “Zooming” our weekly GRN prayer time. The then US director, calling  in from somewhere across the globe, held up a large poster as he indicated small blue dots across the outlined countries of the world. “These dots are unreached people groups,” he explained. He then pointed to India, which had a different appearance from any of the other countries. “This,” he said, “has so many unreached people groups it just blew up into blue.”

I missed the rest of his presentation as that phrase, “It just blew up into blue” stopped my world. I stared at the vivid blue that filled the country of India. How could that be? How could so many people be so utterly without the Lord? My ICU nurse background kicked in: “This is a CODE BLUE!  During a Code Blue, all staff drop what they were  doing to answer this most urgent call. No one ignores it!

I slept fitfully that night, praying as I struggled to understand. Yes, there are a billion people in India, and yes, ministries are stretched very thin. Yes, there are severe persecution, famine, and pandemics of biblical proportions. But, what is that compared to even one man’s eternal soul? How could so many groups be still unreached? But I thought, perhaps I am wrong, and more is being done than I perceive. So I began to research. But that only supported the   seriousness of this situation.

Joshua Project, one of GRN’s partners in the Great Commission work, collects data of the sort I was looking for. On one of their blue – yes, it was honestly blue – posters was the following information. “96% of laborers work in REACHED people groups, while only 4% of Christian laborers work with UNREACHED people.”

A full 40% of the earth’s people are considered unreached and 25% have less than 0.1% Christian and no Jesus movement. I wondered as I thought of that one tenth of a percent valiantly trying to address all of their two billion (that’s 2,000,000,000)spiritually dying neighbors.

What? Is the hospital so short-staffed we can’t attend to a crisis? Can we not break away from passing dinner trays to those sitting up in bed long enough to grab a crash cart and save those who are actually perishing?

Then God reminded me of something very comforting. Called “the tip of the spear” by other agencies, GRN creates the Gospel in simple audio form for people who many times do not have an alphabet to even begin to read. The goal here is to produce tools for all  other agencies and individuals to use in taking the story of Jesus to ALL people in audio format. Yes, thank you Lord, ALL PEOPLE.

Won’t you pray urgently with me that the Gospel will sweep over the earth like a wildfire? That the dots on the poster, representing pockets of unreached human beings, and the nations so deluged with dots that they turned their own picture blue, will have the mercy of God fall upon them as people step up and step out, and run – yes, run – to the Code Blue?

Let us, as God calls each individual, “share, pray, give, send, and/or go in His grace and power alone and for His Glory among the nations,” as that very blue poster says.