Shalom, Syria and me

 Between the lines of rhetoric covering everything from Thatcher’s hairstyles to her music playlist to her controversial ideology this week, you might have missed that political wars of a very different nature continue to rage on around the globe.
 
Squashed under the reams of photos spanning the Iron Lady’s 11 years in power lurks the minor news story that North Korea have a ballistic missile with a 2,000-mile range fuelled and ready to launch. A test in the next few days is imminent.
 
Slightly closer to home, the civil war erupting in Syria sends cold shivers down my spine any time another clip of its news crops up on the radio. When I saw that Sunday marked the 19th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, I couldn’t help but immediately equate it to the dire situation in Syria and the seeming inertia from the international political community. With the civilian death toll rising daily and intense fighting that appears intent on blazing its country to ashes, it appears to be happening all over again; and I feel totally helpless.
 
Without wanting to sound too much like an entrant to a Miss World competition, what I’d really like is world peace. As over-simplistic and ideological that sounds, it is a genuine desire. 
 
Peace on earth – it’s become something so ethereal and removed, we can forget that it also applies to us. And this is where things start to become uncomfortable. Jesus makes it clear in the Sermon on the Mount that murder is not just a physical act but something that can also happen in our hearts when we hold hatred against someone else. I suspect Martin Luther King was drawing on Jesus’s words when he said: “Non-violence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.” The radical path to becoming a peacemaker begins with examining the violence in my own being towards myself, others and even God because this is where war begins. 
 
Then, of course, we really start to see how difficult peace is because – actually –  people have hurt me and it’s hard to forgive when the pain is still raw; people have taken things away from me that I wanted and it feels too hard to release them. Peace isn’t always a warm feeling of tranquility in our bodies – it can be something that pulls at every part of us. Peace and what it requires, hurts. It strips us back to a place of humility where we have to lay down our pride if we are to move forwards in our relationships. Sometimes it can feel that one of the most difficult asks of the Christian walk is “to settle our relationships with one another” and “drop our differences” (2 Corinthians 5). Yet this is the route to that striking Old Testament word shalom which is “to live in right relations with God, oneself, one’s neighbours and the whole of creation” (Global Dictionary of Theology).
 
Among the titles prophesied about Jesus before his birth, it is not insignificant that one of them was Prince of Peace. Born into an occupied nation as the underdog and a subsequent refugee, he would have known the earthly grittiness of conflict. His very incarnation was an act of reconciliation; his life and death shattering the no-man’s land between God and humankind.
 
As overwhelming and depressing as the statistics coming out of Syria are, we must not lose interest. Let’s keep as engaged as we can; read the newspapers, ask difficult questions, donate to the DEC appeal, and pray unceasingly for mercy to prevail, lives to be saved and the country to be restored. We might not all strap £2,000 around our waist to hand out to the refugees in the camps as Gill Newman did, but we could help her to fill 1,000 school bags to ensure that the displaced children of Syria can continue with their all important education.
 
We won’t all be involved in diplomatic efforts to curtail the violence and pave the way for a ceasefire; but taking the great reconciler as our inspiration, we will play our part in bringing peace on earth by ushering it in, and out of our own hearts.

Katherine Maxwell-Cook, freelance writer and multimedia co-ordinator & writer at the Evangelical Alliance

Miscellanies 73 - In all my pains and sufferings

In all my pains and sufferings, I know that my precious Lord Jesus Christ will never refuse my grief to share.

I say with Job that my Redeemer lives, and add on to this that He lives with great sympathy of my condition because once upon a time he too was once tried and tested.

He knows the bitterness and shame, the hurt and barrenness of such trials, therefore his heart is forever tender towards my painful season and will grant me all of his comforting sympathy.

When I mourn he understands, when I weep he can recount his own tears, when I yell Father, why do you feel far from me? he remembers his cross and his own cry of dereliction.

When my sickness is unto death, he remembers the darkness of his tomb, and when I feel that all friends have abandoned me, he remembers Peter's sorry eyes.

O, my Christ is the comforting Redeemer! I know that all of my sufferings is done in his hospital.

He is ever attending to my needs and whispers to me of his own resurrection and victory which is my victory and that one day, I too will rise.

K.Oni

Miscellanies 72 - Away with all your excuses

My dear brother, if you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if you are sinning in secret but maintain a holy public, how are you not the hypocrite?

Away with all of your excuses! Arrive to the naked fact that you are a disobedient man and at worst an unconverted wretch.

You claim the title of a believer but there is no fruit that displays that you are grown of the tree of Christ.

What shall you do now? Will you still carry your pride, refusing to humble yourself and not ask for the new-birth?

Will you not cry out to the Almighty that you are a wretch and need power to repent.

What you decide has much to do with where you will spend your eternity. I speak in such a way because first and foremost I am concerned for the soul of men and their eternal happiness.

I beseech you dear one, to lean entirely on the alter of mercy and forsake the reliance upon your own good-works and once upon a time confession.

It is not our decisions for Christ which saves us but the faith that leads to repentance which is altogether a gift from heaven.

K.Oni

The writings of Sunny Caane - Nothing seems hopeful

At this moment my dear friend, nothing seems hopeful, nothing seems cheerful, nothing seems bright. There is only the all-encompassing air of uselessness. I feel my own ineptness and bareness. I sincerely wish that I had a heart for anything. I have no sentiment for a friend, none for family and not a soul for a lover. The world in all her business is naught to me. Even as I write to you, my cherished childhood friend, I write out of necessity, that you perhaps who countlessly has been a sun in my midnight may be the flower to make me merry. My Sunny, ironically the sun of my soul, I shall be with you in a few days’ time and if I appear far from my jovial condition, it is because there is an emptiness in my humanity.

Looking forward to seeing you desperately hoping your countenance will restore my brightness.

Christopher  

Miscellanies 71 - A sea of sin

Some of you are in a pitiful season because before you is a sea of sin. The waves of your disobedience are ever rising upon your sinking soul. As a result of this torrential hammering, you fear to pray. Your soul have left off intimacy with the God of glory because you dread that Christ may come to you and call you a traitor and be tremendously disappointed in you. O poor sinner, weigh down with despondency, who no more has the song of Zion resounding pleasantly in their soul. O sinner, Christ still calls you a friend. Remember in his awful hour when all his friends left him to perish, and left him to die alone. Remember when he rose again from the dead that he did not utter a condemnation at their cowardice, but called them brothers. ‘Go to my brothers and say to them’ says Christ. And when he saw them, what did he say? He says ‘peace to you.’ It is the same Christ that is alive today. Although he calls you to repentance, yet he wishes you peace. He will never turn away the broken hearted. Remember o sinner, that he is your friend. Relinquish your sorry fears and embrace his acceptance. He alone atones for you sins. Pray now with your falling tears, pray now with your broken heart, pray with the surety that His Father has already lend you his ears. It is the business of Christ and his Father to reconcile. Come near, draw near, and run near into his safe arms. 

K.Oni

Nothing from me to loose

I have a heart as soft as sand

Which will wilt at a broken heart.

Severing all ties, like cutting ropes from a top tie

She hypnotize my heart.

Feeling things I don't want to think, 

Late night dreaming dreams I don't want to dream. 

She has nothing from me to loose,

I have her heart from me to loose.

K.Oni

Broken promises

Many of the painful heartaches in this world are caused by broken promises. A politician not delivering his promises to the poor when he comes to power, bankers driving a nation into bankruptcy because their investments never paid off. A father time and time again forgetting to be there for his son because of work and the ruination of a family because of a broken vow. In that sweet hour, the declaration was ‘until death do us part’, but what happens often is that it is the death of affection or immorality that renders the marriage pledge asunder. One spouse is left with a broken heart and if both party have come to a mutual consent, the children are the ones to suffer such faithlessness.

Broken promises when experienced can lead a soul to resent the individual who made the promise and cause an eternal doubt on their character. To put it simply, the one who broke the promise is a liar. Of course there may be legitimate reasons for their poor showing yet we can all say that at some point that we have either broken a promise or been the recipients of a broken promise.

Because man is weak and often a broker of his promises, shall we also judge God and doubt him in his faithfulness? My friends let this be in your soul as to never leave your veins, namely that God is faithful and his words are surer than the rising of the sun. For if God is found to break one of his promises, then God is forever found to be a liar, losing his honour and character. For what hope as the saint in his entering into paradise if he has an unstable God? None at all! He is better to hope in chance.

But if God has been found faithful, never in history breaking his promises, then what reasons have you to doubt that he who began a good work in you will finish it? Why do you doubt that distinct quality of the divine, namely that He is love? Why do you mourn at being forsaken when he has said that he will never leave you nor forsake you? Why do you abandon is fellowship because of your sins, when he has guaranteed your forgiveness through the death of Christ? Why do you not come to him and drink when he says that he will satisfy? Why oh saint do you forsake prayer when he will listen to the broken hearted and the contrite?

You see, men may break their vows, their pledge they may suddenly consider insignificant, but God will never treat a promise, even that which you consider minor as a word to be discarded. God will never be found to be a liar, even your unfaithfulness to God will not nullify his faithfulness if you are one of is elected ones. The Father has only grace upon grace for you, goodness upon goodness lavished upon you with a beaming smile. Even though your portion in this transient earth is perpetrated with much suffering, yet God will be faithful to you in bringing you home to enter into his rest.    

K.Oni