A call to prayer for Nepal

I think of Nepal often. I am an outdoor man. I walk the hills of Scotland. I have long dreamed of Everest. I also know that climb is too dangerous and too costly for me. This week the same Himalayan wall that draws a walker’s heart has been in the news for a far heavier reason.

Just a few days ago on Wednesday morning, 26 August 2026, a glacier high on the Nepal–Tibet border gave way. What the instruments first recorded as an earthquake was, in truth, the collapse of ice and rock. A wall of mud, water and debris tore down the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli valleys. Villages in Rasuwa and Nuwakot were struck in minutes. Bridges snapped. Roads vanished. Hydropower works were wrecked. Homes were gone.

As of this Lord’s Day the death toll in Nepal has risen past seven hundred and thirty. Some two thousand five hundred souls are still listed missing. Among them are villagers, workers, soldiers, and visitors from many nations. The numbers will keep moving. Bodies are being found far downstream. Search teams are still wading through mud.

Now look at the Word. The psalmist could have been standing on that hillside.

God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
Even though the earth be removed,
And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
Though its waters roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with its swelling. Selah
There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved;
God shall help her, just at the break of dawn.
— Psalm 46:1–5, NKJV

Foks, that is not poetry for a quiet afternoon. That is doctrine for a week like this. The earth can be removed. The mountains can be carried into the midst of the sea. We live in a fallen creation. Romans 8 tells us the whole creation groans and labours with birth pangs together until now. This flood is part of that groaning. It is not a puzzle we must solve before we may pray. It is a trouble in which God has promised to be a very present help.

Notice the contrast in the psalm. The mountains shake. The city of God does not. “God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.” The church is not a building on a riverbank. The church is a people indwelt by the living God. Buildings can be swept away. The Lord Jesus said the gates of Hades shall not prevail against His church.

Our family in those valleys

You know there is a Bible-believing Christian witness in Nepal. The census has recorded more than half a million who name the name of Christ. Many of them came out of Hinduism at real cost. They are not a curiosity on a mission map. They are our brothers and our sisters.

Reports from Nepali Christian networks and the World Evangelical Alliance, as of 30 August, are still being checked. They have not all been independently confirmed. They are already heavy enough to drive us to our knees.

  • Timure Church, Rasuwa — many believers reported dead. The pastor is said to be the only known survivor. Of six churches once gathered in that place, two were swept away. Early word spoke of more than one hundred and twenty-five believer deaths still being confirmed.
  • Mailung Church, Rasuwa, where Pastor Dil Bahadur Tamang serves — around fifty missing.
  • Syabrubesi Church, Rasuwa — three missing.
  • Dakhbari Church, Rasuwa — seventeen missing.
  • Santi Bazar, Nuwakot — about thirty believers reported dead.
  • Punarutthan Church, Nuwakot — the pastor missing, the building damaged.
  • Tukche Anugrah Church, Nuwakot — four missing.
  • Naw Jyoti Baptist Church, Nuwakot — the building damaged.

We thank God that the known Calvary Chapel fellowships in Nepal — Calvary Chapel Kathmandu and the related works in Lalitpur, Gongabu, Narephat, Tanahu, Gorkha and Morang, together with Calvary Chapel Bible College Nepal, sit mainly in the Kathmandu valley and in districts off the path of this torrent. As far as we can tell they were spared the direct devastation that tore through Rasuwa and Nuwakot. That is mercy. It is not a reason to fold our hands. The body of Christ is one body.

For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ… And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.
— 1 Corinthians 12:12, 26, NKJV

If Calvary Chapel in Kathmandu was kept, then Calvary Chapel in Kathmandu, and every Calvary Chapel that loves the Word from Genesis to Revelation, is called to suffer with the little fellowships that were not kept. We do not choose our family. The blood of Jesus chose it for us.

National Christian Fellowship Nepal and Nepal Christian Society have already sent teams out of Kathmandu. Some are going in on mountain bikes because the roads are gone. Other works that have long had labourers in the Trishuli valley are staying put with food, water and medicine. That is the church being the church.

What we do not say, and what we do

It important to know and Born Again Christians that we do not stand in Scotland and pronounce that this flood was aimed at this village or that household. Jesus settled that kind of talk in Luke 13. When the tower in Siloam fell and eighteen died, He would not let the crowd turn the dead into a lesson about other men’s sins. “Do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” The message of a disaster is not “they had it coming.” The message is “you must be ready.”

Folks, we also do not say that faith is a charm against mud, I read that the pastor at Timure, if the report holds, was not more righteous than the flock that died. He was spared for reasons known to God. Some of the finest believers have gone home in wreckage. As Hebrews 11 says as saints who “stopped the mouths of lions,” and saints who were “sawn in two.” Same chapter. Same faith. Different providence.

What we do say is this. The Father of mercies has not resigned.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ.
— 2 Corinthians 1:3–5, NKJV

You know as Christians, comfort in the New Testament is not a soft word, it is strength poured in. God does not just pat the afflicted on the head, like a father to his kid. He comes alongside. Then He uses the comforted to comfort others. That is why a man in Scotland who will never stand at Everest Base Camp can still have a ministry in Rasuwa this week. He can pray. He can give. He can refuse to look away.

And the earth is still the Lord’s.

The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness,
The world and those who dwell therein.
For He has founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the waters.
— Psalm 24:1–2, NKJV

The glacier did not surprise Him. The river did not escape His notice. “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will.” (Matthew 10:29, NKJV) If a sparrow cannot fall without Him, a valley cannot flood without Him. That does not make the grief smaller. It makes the grief held.

The hope that outlasts the mud

There is a river in Psalm 46 that does not destroy. “There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God.” That river is the life of God among His people. Jesus stood on the last day of the feast and cried, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.” (John 7:37, NKJV) The same Lord who will one day make a new heaven and a new earth, in which there is no more sea of chaos, is able to keep a widow in Nuwakot tonight.

Paul takes us further.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us… For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.
— Romans 8:18, 22, NKJV

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
— Romans 8:35, 37–39, NKJV

Height cannot separate them. Depth cannot separate them. A wall of Himalayan debris cannot separate them. If they were in Christ when the water came, they are with Christ now. “To be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:8, NKJV) That is not a small comfort. That is the gospel.

For those who remain, the call is the same call Chuck Smith never tired of giving: stay in the Word. Take the whole counsel of God, Genesis to Revelation. Do not live on scraps. A church that is fed on the Scripture will have something to say when the river rises, and something to give when the river falls.

How then shall we pray?

Let us be definite.

  1. That some who are listed missing may yet be found alive, and that the Lord would give skill and safety to every rescue team still in the mud.
  2. For the families who wait, and for the families who already know. Ask the Father of mercies to be a very present help at the break of dawn.
  3. For the pastors and flocks named above, and for every unnamed believer in Rasuwa and Nuwakot. Ask God to raise shepherds for the scattered sheep.
  4. For the Calvary Chapel works in Kathmandu and beyond — that having been spared the torrent, they would be poured out for those who were not.
  5. For clean water, food, shelter, and a hedge around them against further disaster of flooding and disease.
  6. For the gospel to be spoken with tenderness and with authority while hearts are open. Not as an opportunist’s pitch, but as living water.
  7. For the authorities in Nepal and in neighbouring China, that help would reach the right places and that corruption would not swallow the relief.
  8. For our own hearts, that we would not be hearers only. “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” (James 1:22, NKJV)

If the Lord has put means in your hand, put some of it into a trusted Christian work already on that ground. Prayer is first. Prayer that never opens the hand is not the prayer of the book of James.

A last word from the hills

I will not stand at Everest Base Camp. I can stand on a Scottish hillside and I can kneel. That is not a second-best discipleship. The Lord who founded the earth upon the seas is as present in Argyll as He is in Rasuwa.

God is our refuge and strength. The mountains may be carried into the midst of the sea. The church will not be moved. Let us suffer with those who suffer. Let us comfort with the comfort we have received. Let us keep looking up.

Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah
— Psalm 46:10–11, NKJV

The Lord of hosts is with them. The Lord of hosts is with us. Selah.

Grace and peace in Christ Jesus.

Peter
Scotland