Chaos

Well it is, isn’t it? Chaos? Certainly seems like it to me. I know I shouldn’t admit to this, but I don’t watch the TV much and hardly ever watch the news. I used to. But I don’t anymore. I do listen the radio and I always have it on the news station. But I don’t sit down and watch the news. To be honest, it’s just too hard to watch. Agendas aside (and I recognise every news station has a bias and an opinion however much they might say they don’t, even the good old BBC) we only seem to want to talk about everything that’s wrong! And there’s a lot to talk about. And I find myself wanting to avoid that. So I don’t watch it. I’m not doing very well if Spurgeon was right and I should be writing sermons with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Perhaps I do it in a different way. Maybe you are a better judge of that than me, since you, perhaps listen to my sermons! And right now…there’s so much chaos. Black lives matter. Yes, they do. Absolutely they do. But so do other lives: refugees; widows and orphans; the street homeless. The list could go on. My brother-in-law lives in Minneapolis. He’s actually scared to leave his house: COVID-19 is out there and so is extraordinary violence perpetrated by some people protesting about…violence…Chaos. I’m struggling to know how to respond. Forgive me for not remembering the exact details of what I’m about to write. Some years ago I was reading a book (can’t even remember which one) and the story was told of a Jewish man who had been a prisoner of war in the concentration camps of WWII. He was giving evidence at the Nuremburg trials against of one of the officials at the concentration camps. When the accused was brought into the court, the Jewish man fainted. Everyone assumed he had fainted because when he saw his oppressor it was too much for him. Not true. He said he fainted because when he saw the man unshaven, dishevelled and in handcuffs, he realised how much this man was just like him. And if this man could commit such atrocities, then so could he! There is chaos out there. That is certainly true. And, maybe there is chaos in each of our hearts. Frightening, but perhaps more true than we mostly care to admit. Perhaps the reason I avoid the news is because, somewhere deep inside, I’m aware of the chaos in my own heart. But I am not without hope. In the beginning, God moved over the chaos and brought life. He still does. And, in the present chaos, I can hold onto that deep and profound truth. And maybe you can too.