Holocaust

I was struck by the crafted words of a journalist reporting on today's commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz:  Those who survived Auschwitz lived through one of the 20th Century's worst acts of hatred and inhumanity.

 

In a world where hype so often hides the truth here is the truth: one of one century's worst.

 

In fact the importance of marking today in our thoughts is not because it was unthinkably bad but because the inhumanity of the Nazis toward the Jews and others is repeatable.  The industrial, secret and targeted scale of it sets it apart, but only in degree.  I witnessed the fears that surround this still in one of my earlier blogs.

Protection for Frankfurt's Synagogue - today

We call it inhumanity because we do not want to think of it as human.  But it is absolutely human.  What other created species sets about its own in such a way?  Certainly none with any moderately developed intelligence.

I like the optimism in the word inhumanity.  I like it but I'm not sure I entirely believe it.  Humanity's best hope lies, I think, in the Man from Heaven.

Who am I?

Last Sunday we read Psalm 139.  Psalm 139 is one of the most dramatic pieces of Scripture.  It affirms God's total knowledge of us; that he knows us better than we know ourselves.

 

An obvious reason is that he saw my unformed body.  Another that he knows all the days ordained for me.  Our self knowledge of our early life is nil as is our knowledge of our future.

 

What we might excel in is our self-knowledge in adult life - the middling bit.  There at least we can know what we're about even if God knows us better.  Or so we'd like to think.

 

I have always been struck by the disciples' question at the Last Supper when Jesus says someone will betray him.  They asked, "Is it me?" (Mark 14:19).  Do we know ourselves in mid-adulthood?

 

 

I have also witnessed a thousand broken promises made by grown up people - promises made perhaps with great ceremony - only for time to prove that the vowmaker did not know their own heart.  A few days ago I read a glowing statement by a wife writing about her husband after he'd had a great sadness: she wrote of how much it made her realise she loved him.  She added that, looking through their future life, I want to be there for him through it all.  I found the statement scary because I know this model marriage, applauded in several Christian publications, ended with her running off with someone else one Christmas.  Through it all, didn't even mean, as it was to turn out, through very much.

 

The Psalmist wisely ends with a prayer that is ironically often used as a statement of emptiness: Search me!  The believer can add that crucial other word - Search me, God.  The disciples didn't know themselves very well, but they knew who did!

Ivy

I have been pulling out ivy.  I have never planted ivy at any house I have lived in but it has been a constant companion, appearing in just about every garden I have tended.

 

To be honest, I think this is s natural judgment because many years back while living in a bedsit I was given an ivy plant which I planted (undoubtedly contrary to regulations) outside the building.  A few years later I noticed the building façade had turned wholly green and only God and I knew why . . .

 

Ivy is allegedly in some danger of death during English winters but that has never been my experience (unless I do the killing).  It just stays and gets ready to take over more of the garden than it had previously done.  It clings.

 

Edward Bickersteth noticed that too:

 

Ivy, which unsupported would lay on the ground, by clinging can rise high in the air. The more the wind blows, the more it clings to its support and so is safe.  Similarly Christians are linked to God.

Don't think. Just say it - HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Google has just wished me a Happy New Year!!

And I wish it hadn't.  It's made my new year a bit miserable already because it made me think.  How can Google mean anything by wishing its readers such a thing?

 

Problem 1: Some very undesirable characters look at Google.  This is because nearly everyone looks at Google.  For some of them a Happy New Year involves very nasty things indeed for other people who look at Google who are also being wished a Happy New Year.  I mean, is there any lifer recently sentenced in any western nation who hasn't used Google?  For some Googlers to have a Happy New Year some must have a rotten one.

 

Problem 2:  Even if every Googler deserved a Happy New Year  (which they don't) there is no possibility at all that they can all have one.  There just isn't.  No atheist, no theist, no-one believes this is possible.  There's going to be stuff happening.  We'll need umbrellas, refunds, handkerchiefs, ambulances, fire stations, anti-terrorist units, law courts, mortuaries . . .

 

Problem 3:  What does a wish from Google mean?  What does Google think happiness is?  Surely Google wishes only for bigger profits?  Even if its wishes were feasible they are insincere.

 

So I think it's all Google's fault that Happy New Year has presented me with my first 'he thinks too much' of 2015.  But I do hope for a Happy Year and I pray to God that everyone who reads this will find true happiness which is only found in Him. 

 

Ironically God - the only One who could - does not wish us all a Happy New Year.  It's simply because our proper wish is not a Happy New Year but God himself.  A Happy New Year might even get in the way. 

 

Thou hast prompted man, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee. [Augustine]