Pam's Perambulation

We only need to catch a snippet of any news at the moment, to think that the world has gone mad – and bad.  Fighting, killing, hostage taking, displacement of people from their homes – general inhumanity to one another.  What are we doing?  Our minds are troubled and our hearts break.

To some, this also raises the question, ‘What is God doing?’, ‘Where is he?’, ‘Why is he allowing this?’

My answer to that is that his heart is breaking too.

For God is not allowing all this – people are.  It is not God that is taking up arms, persecuting, massacring – but human beings.

Could God step in and stop it?  Don’t you think he’s trying to?  But for that it needs the people involved to respond.  God is not the one with the weapons in his hands – human beings are.  However much he might want them to stop, he can’t make them.  He can plead with them, but do they hear?  He might show them his way, but do they listen?  And if they hear do they respond?  And if some do, are there not many more who will step into their place in hatred and thinking they are right.

It is  a responsibility of each one of us to listen for God’s voice on our actions, and to respond accordingly.  The same applies in our own lives, however small we think they are.  We might get upset about the atrocities we see very vividly portrayed on our screen – quite rightly, but do we also consider the way we behave?  The minor wars we rage in our lives?  The need for our way to be right?  The shunning and side-lining of those we don’t agree with.  That is how wars and persecution start – it is just a matter of scale.

Where is God in these situations, big and small?  He is gently whispering, and loudly shouting, into our hearts and minds.  Stop that.  Choose love.  Talk to each other.  Live my way.

Love one another as I have loved you

Oh Lord,
my heart breaks,
for the madness,
the cruelty,
the injustice
I see in the world.

But I know that your heart
is breaking much more.
You know these people,
intimately,
and love them dearly.

So Lord,
I beg you,
not to do something,
for I know you are;
but for them to hear,
and do something
to make evil,
hatred
and inhumanity to stop.
Bring
not temporary cease-fires,
but change
of heart and mind.

And Lord,
as I look on the ‘big’ situations,
may I think too
on my actions,
where I am,
each day.

May I too
hear your voice
in the way I treat others.

Lord,
in your mercy,
give us all
hearts and lives of love

~ by pamjw on August 10, 2014.

Posted in community, faith, God, hope, justice, Rants and Ramblings, Religion, theology
Tags: hope, humanity, injustice, love, war