The Cry of the Blood

Introduction – by Matt Miller

Tonight we talked about hell and annihilation.

Not a subject anyone wants to talk about.

But one we must.

As we were talking, something unsettled me—not just the topic, but myself.

Wars are raging in Ukraine and Russia, and in other places around the world.

People are dying.

Blood is being shed for what often feels like pointless reasons.

And I realized something uncomfortable:

I didn’t feel much.

No ache.

No weight.

No trembling urgency.

So I asked myself, why?

Why don’t I feel the way I should?

And the word that came to mind was desensitization.

When you’re exposed to the same thing over and over, it starts to lose its edge.

The first time you hear a gunshot, your heart jumps.

The first time you see death on a screen, it shakes you.

The first time you see something indecent, it affects you.

But the more you see it—

the more normalized it becomes.

Video games.

News cycles.

Endless images of violence and bloodshed.

And slowly, quietly, you can walk through this world

without anything making you shiver,

or shake,

or sweat.

No fear.

No taste.

Just numbness.

And tonight, I realized I don’t need to pray only for others.

I need to pray for myself.

That God would give me back sensitivity.

That He would wake me up to reality again.

That He would let me see—

not in a morbid way,

but in a true way.

That I would remember the finality of eternity.

The seriousness of souls.

The weight of what’s at stake.

I found myself thinking about something I read many years ago by Amy Carmichael—

The Cry of the Blood.

Her prayer wasn’t comfortable.

It wasn’t polite.

It was a plea for vision.

That God would show us enough of reality

to ignite compassion,

to stir urgency,

to move us to rescue those who cannot see.

So tonight, I want to ask you to pray with me.

Not for fear.

Not for drama.

But for holy sensitivity.

That God would soften what has grown hard.

That He would awaken what has gone numb.

That He would remind us why this matters.

May He give us eyes to see,

hearts that still feel,

and lives that respond.

God bless you all.

The Cry of the Blood

by Amy Carmichael

⸻

The tom-toms thumped straight on all night and the darkness shuddered round me like a living, feeling thing. I could not go to sleep, so I lay awake and looked; and I saw, as it seemed, this:

That I stood on a grassy sward, and at my feet a precipice broke sheer down into infinite space. I looked, but saw no bottom; only cloud shapes, black and furiously coiled, and great shadow-shrouded hollows, and unfathomable depths. Back I drew, dizzy at the depth.

Then I saw forms of people moving single file along the grass. They were making for the edge. There was a woman with a baby in her arms and another little child holding on to her dress. She was on the very verge. Then I saw that she was blind. She lifted her foot for the next step . . . it trod air. She was over, and the children over with her.

Oh, the cry as they went over!

Then I saw more streams of people flowing from all quarters. All were blind, stone blind; all made straight for the precipice edge. There were shrieks, as they suddenly knew themselves falling, and a tossing up of helpless arms, catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly, and fell without a sound.

Then I wondered, with a wonder that was simply agony, why no one stopped them at the edge. I could not. I was glued to the ground, and I could only call; though I strained and tried, only whisper would come.

Then I saw that along the edge there were sentries set at intervals. But the intervals were too great; there were wide, unguarded gaps between. And over these gaps the people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned; and the green grass seemed blood-red to me, and the gulf yawned like the mouth of hell.

Then I saw, like a little picture of peace, a group of people under some trees with their backs turned toward the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached them, it disturbed them and they thought it a rather vulgar noise. And if one of their number started up and wanted to go and do something to help, then all the others would pull that one down.

“Why should you get so excited about it?

You must wait for a definite call to go!

You haven’t finished your daisy chain yet.

It would be really selfish,” they said,

“to leave us to finish the work alone.”

There was another group. It was made up of people whose great desire was to get more sentries out; but they found that very few wanted to go, and sometimes there were no sentries set for miles and miles of the edge.

Once a girl stood alone in her place, waving the people back; but her mother and other relations called and reminded her that her furlough was due; she must not break the rules. And being tired and needing a change, she had to go and rest for awhile; but no one was sent to guard her gap, and over and over the people fell, like a waterfall of souls.

Once a child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf; it clung convulsively, and it called—but nobody seemed to hear. Then the roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over, its two little hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch of grass.

Then through the hymn came another sound like the pain of a million broken hearts wrung out in one full drop, one sob. And a horror of great darkness was upon me, for I knew what it was—the Cry of the Blood.

Then thundered a voice, the voice of the Lord:

“What hast thou done?

The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.”

What does it matter, after all? It has gone on for years; it will go on for years. Why make such a fuss about it?

God forgive us!

God arouse us!

Shame us out of our callousness!

Shame us out of our sin!

⸻

— Amy Carmichael

from Things As They Are (1903)