This post should be a cause for celebration, as it is my first official post on my “rarght nice” new blog site. However, the news that has warranted this post is hardly worth raising a glass too (filled with grape juice… and… joking).
If you have read some of my other posts, and one in particular, you will understand that I am prone to enjoy the cut and thrust of sport, the punch and counter-punch of oppositional conflict resolution, where on a given day, on a given piece of real estate, two opposing forces meet to decide.
Okay, so I am painting a rather mythical picture of the nature of the sporting contest, but it is want to grip my consciousness, at least until the adverts do their salacious rounds.
I was enjoying my next fix of cricket, kiwi style, until I was drawn out of this vortex by the reality of the circumstances of the Sri Lankan cricket team.
If you have not heard, or have been having tecky-timeout, in what can only be described as a coordinated attack, approx. 14 gunmen opened fire on the Sri Lankan cricket team bus as they neared Gaddafi Stadium. The bus driver has been hailed as a hero, as he courageously manoeuvred the bus to safety while the gunfight was in earnest, thereby saving the Sri Lankan cricketers lives.
As details have come forward, it is clear that this was a planned kill-offensive. The terrorists indicated their endeavors by firing a rocket at the bus, and by putting grenades under the bus, which thankfully did not “go off.” Two car bombs were also defused, a pistol was recovered, along with a given number of grenades, and 3 kilograms of explosives recovered.
While we are want to elevate those in the public arena, after all, this is what I am actually doing by focusing my comments on the team at this point, and while it is grievous that a number of Sri Lankan cricketers were attacked and injured… let us all remember that it is six policemen and one bus driver who have had their short time on this planet stopped in its track. The full trajectory of the humanitarian impact will be astounding and heart-breaking for so many.
As I reflect on this reality, my mind is pulled back to images of the-then captain of our NZ Cricket team, in the year of 2002, when they returned from Pakistan because of another terrorist attack. They were staying in the Sheraton Hotel in the city of Karachi when in the vicinity of their Hotel, all Hell broke loose.
I was in Australia at the time, and I vividly remember watching Stephen Fleming breaking down in front of the media upon his return to New Zealand. You did not need any words that day to describe what had taken place and its impact thereof. They had front row tickets… and it had been brutal, scary, and horrific, and “Flem” was vividly exemplifying this for all who were watching.
I have not had the sorrow of being in such a context as the Sri Lankan cricketers or Stephen Fleming, but I have had a small taste, like one drop in the bottom of bucket experience.
While I was in Israel, we had to be locked in at Rachel’s tomb because of stone throwing. It is quite a surreal feeling to see boys, pretending to be men (most are just out of school), locking the door and preparing how to approach and deal with a possibly serious situation (the Israeli Army). When you hear sounds “going off,” which sounds suspiciously like gunfire (rocks on the roof), and you see such deliberations, one can easily entertain the suggestion that this could be “wrong time wrong place” scenario playing out, humanly speaking.
In the end, the rocks stopped, and we were escorted to out bullet-proof bus, but it was a infinitesimally small inside look at the impact of terror, where for a few moments in time, we were imaging too numerous accounts from our TV sets into out present reality.
The wonders of technology is that people may be reading this in parts of the world, where hope seems to be sinking with every tick-tick-tocking of one’s clock. Everywhere you look, there is a reminder that this is not what it should be, and you are right!
If you are feeling hopeless, let me spell out the solution… J-E-S-U-S!
In conclusion, I point you to these words from Tim Keller in The Prodigal God about the One who, in the words of a movie, can and will make hope float
The book of Genesis tells us that when God made this world he looked upon the physical creation and called it ‘good.’ He loves and cares for the material world. The fact of Jesus’s resurrection and the promise of a new heavens and new earth show clearly that he still cares for it. This world is not simply a theater for individual conversion narratives, to be discarded at the end when we all go to heaven. No, the ultimate purpose of Jesus is not only individual salvation and pardon for sins but also the renewal of this world, the end of disease, poverty, injustice, violence, suffering, and death. The climax of history is not a higher form of disembodied consciousness but a feast. God made the world with all its colors, tastes, lights, sounds, with all its life-forms living in interdependent systems. It is now marred, stained, and broken, and he will not rest until he has put it right. Pages 110, 111
Christianity, therefore, is perhaps the most materialistic of the world’s faiths. Jesus’s miracles were not so much violations of the natural order, but a restoration of the natural order. God did not create a world with blindness, leprosy, hunger, and death in it. Jesus’s miracles were signs that someday all these corruptions of his creation would be abolished. Christians therefore can talk of saving the soul and of building social systems that deliver safe streets amd warm homes in the same sentence. With integrity.
Jesus hates suffering, injustice, evil, and death so much, he came and experienced it to defeat it and, someday, to wipe the world clean of it. Knowing all this, Christians cannot be passive about hunger, sickness, and injustice. Karl Marx and others have charged that religion is ‘the opiate of the masses.’ That is, it is a sedative that makes people passive toward injustice, because there will be ‘pie in the sky bye and bye.’ That may be true of some religions that teach people that this material world is unimportant or illusory. Christianity, however, teaches that God hates the suffering and oppression of this material world so much, he was willing to get involved in it and to fight against it. Properly understood, Christianity is by no means the opiate of the people. It’s more like the smelling salts. Pages 112, 113
Jesus may not take you out of the situation you are in, but He will take the impact of the situation out of you… promising that what happens at present time is NOT the end of the story.
John 14:27 says, “Peace I leave you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
Until Next Time…
Postscript: For those who are wanting to read more about the terrorist attack in Pakistan on the Sri Lankan cricket team, following are some articles from different sources, here, here, and here.
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