Rising Lion, Weeping Earth

A call to pray for peace

"Behold, a people! As a lioness it rises up,
and as a lion it lifts itself;
it does not lie down until it has devoured the prey
and drunk the blood of the slain." — Numbers 23:24 ESV

There's often a bit of chatter about whether Balaam was a false prophet or true but the answer is seen in the loyalty of his heart. It certainly wasn't YHWH. Though hired to curse, he could not escape the gravitational pull of God's purposes. Israel is depicted not as a wandering flock but as a rising lion - strong, awake, unyielding. Not the hunted, but the hunter. This is not the timid people who once trembled at the Red Sea’s edge, but a nation shaped by covenant, marked by promise, and advancing under divine authority. His words in Numbers 23:24 were meant to spotlight Israel’s unstoppable rise, fierce and focused like a lion. But when that same verse is taken and draped over war - when it becomes the banner for bombing, for airstrikes, for devastation - the weight of prophecy is not just sacred. It's sobering.

Apparently Prime Minister Netanyahu even placed a handwritten note featuring that very verse into the Western Wall before the strike, clearly showing Israel’s deliberate connection with biblical prophecy.

Yesterday, on 13 June, Israel named its assault on Iran Operation Rising Lion, lifting the words of a pagan prophet as if to crown a military act with divine favour. It's become a verse now stitched into the tragic fabric of war, and while geopolitics grind on and world leaders posture, people bleed. In Tehran. In Jerusalem. In Gaza.

And here we are, unwillingly seeing the awful drama on TVs, tablets and phones—watching, grieving, praying, because even though it’s not the end of the world, for those in the middle of the explosions, the rubble, the screams, the pain and emotional anguish—it might as well be.

There’s a difference between rising like a lion and reigning as the Lamb. We remind ourselves, each other: Christ—the Lion of Judah—didn't ascend through conquest but through the cross. He did not devour His enemies. He bled for them. He did not roar to intimidate. He wept. And in the cry of Calvary, He offered a peace no army across the nations - not even the ones that brag about being the greatest - can broker.

So we pray. And we must.

Not long prayers, necessarily. Not polished ones. But real ones. Whether for one minute or many, whispered or wept, it doesn’t matter, the anointing is the same. We ask God - because only the Prince of Peace can do what missiles and endless enraged meetings cannot. We ask for Jerusalem. We ask for Iran. We ask for Gaza. And we ask for our own hearts not to grow numb and keep loving.

Lord, let your Kingdom come. Let the lion lie down with the lamb.
And until that day, let your church be found interceding, loving, weeping - and waiting.