These days I try very hard to mind my business. A lot of that comes with age. You get to that point when it really does not matter whether (they think) you’re right or wrong. You simply conserve your energy (rightly so). Over the years, with youthful exuberance you spent a lot of that energy fighting wars that on hindsight were not worth a penny. The energy is also in short supply, exemplified by the grey hair everywhere, fading vision and of course rising blood pressure.
My first emotional response to the Jews in today’s Israel came from the novel, Exodus by Leon Uris which I read in the early ‘80s. From Sunday School a decade earlier to all of my adult life, I have believed that the Jews are God’s chosen people and through Jesus Christ the rest of us who believe have been adopted as God’s children. My daughter once asked me if it was fair that God gave the Jews other people’s land in the Old Testament. I have also read about the Early Church and examples of modern communities, towns and cities in which the people who were originally Christian or traditional religion worshippers have since lost their homeland to a foreign religion. One thing I have never understood is why the adopted children are more vociferous about the Christian faith than the Jews for whom the Messiah came.
So, Hamas caught Israel napping and savagely slaughtered many, largely civilian men, women and children and took over two hundred hostages. Their leaders knew they lived in the world’s biggest open prison and they were convinced the best approach to a political solution was a premeditated bloodbath. They knew ahead of time that Israel would respond with fire and brimstone. The on-going loss of lives on both sides does not make sense to me. I was already exhausted by the opening salvo of bloodletting and avoided reading any fact or propaganda on social media after an initial fruitless exchange of WhatsApp stories between my eldest daughter and I. Why do people kill? It does not make sense to me. There is something so final about death.
The other weekend, another daughter told her Mum that she was going to attend a Pro-Palestinian peaceful protest in Leeds City Centre.
‘What if I tell you not to go?’
‘I’ll probably still go,’ She promptly replied.
Mum gave her blessings.
The war between Russia and Ukraine does not make sense to me. One nation begins a special operation to get rid of Neo-Nazis in another sovereign nation and hundreds of thousands are dead. The blood letting continues. The world press has moved on from Europe to the Middle East.
There’s one more thing. A man was declared winner of a highly contested election, the final results released before the break of dawn and he was sworn into office before the election petitions got underway. The Supreme Court finally declared him winner and there was no jubilation on the streets of Nigeria. This too does not make sense to me.
One thing does make sense. Love covers a multitude of sins. If USA, China, Russia, European Union, UK, Iran, Saudi Arabia for once spoke the language of love and not the language of death (arms), we would probably have world peace.
- If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
- If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
- If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
- Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
- It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
- Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
- It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
- Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
- For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
- but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
- When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
- For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
- And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
