Chemical Attack

Suddenly there were rats.

Some years ago villagers in parts of Borneo found rats everywhere and with them the threats that come from such an infestation.  

It seemed especially cruel because considerable efforts had recently been made by the World Health Organisation to eliminate another threat – mosquitoes.  

As if that wasn’t enough the thatched roofs of their homes were frequently collapsing, weakened by some other unwelcome pest.

There are times like this the world over.  Trouble comes in threes, goes the old saying.  That’s when we can get very touchy about God.  After all, it seems an oversight on His part that any trouble gets through at all and we feel the more aggrieved when it feels like He’s mistakenly let several enemies past the entry gate at once.

Back to Borneo.  

The rats, it turned out, had become numerous because the cats were not catching them any longer.  Why? Easy – the village cats had all fallen sick and died.  (That was perhaps a fourth calamity).  

The reason for the dead cats was harder to spot.  After all, what has your cat eaten on its roaming today?  It turned out that lizards were the problem.  Having eaten lizards for years the cats discovered too late that the lizards were now poisonous.  The lizards were poisonous because they ate the flies. The lizards had probably thought they were on to a good thing because the flies had recently become markedly easier to catch – well, often dead in fact.

[I digress to point out that the roofs of the houses were made of a thatch that was susceptible to moth larvae.  The said flies, until they began dying out, had always eaten enough larvae (before themselves being eaten by the lizards – are you still with me?) to keep the thatch in good order. Dead flies = happy munching moth larvae = collapsed roofs.]

The dead flies?  Ah yes. That was because of the World Health Organisation’s chemical attack on the mosquitoes (remember them?). The chemical was poisoning the flies too.  

All the bad things were part of one system failure.

Since Adam the Bible instructs human beings that they are in sin’s dysfunctional (theologians call it fallen) system.  Bad things happen amid remaining good things.  Why so many troubles?  What could they possibly have to do with each other?  The Bible makes it clear that it is Man, not God that has let the multiplicity of enemies through the door.  Our random agonies are in the collective chain of results from sin and natural judgment.

This is why, as the Bible ends, this promise is made: He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.

In Christ’s new order it is not that there will be fewer problems, less sin and reduced sadness. They will be gone. A failed system will have passed away. 

Blessed?

The glories of Spring!!

Clear blue skies and warm sunshine make us all feel more 'blessed'.  So perhaps this is a good day to infiltrate this challenging Franciscan blessing . . .

May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships,

So that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger

At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,

So that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with tears

To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,

So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness

To believe that you can make a difference in the world,

So that you can do what others claim cannot be done,

To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

Amen

An April Evening

The first genuinely spring day (as against day in Spring) moves toward its close.  The sun looks like it has forgotten to go down - or at least is staying up late - perhaps to make up for its relative disappearance over several weeks.

It brings to mind something that can only be associated with such an April evening:

Maybe it's down to my male council estate barbarism but this bit of Victorian-Edwardian sacred choral doggerel did nasty things to me.  This has evoked guilt over the years when elderly people have expressed their devotion to it - one wanted me to play it on the organ so they could sing it and some imagination was required to avoid this.

This April I've decided to try to understand myself on this issue.

My initial excuse to myself was the paucity of the performance of a Sunday evening Free Church choir in the 1960s when its finest days would have been its former days.  But listening to this chorally excellent rendition on YouTube convinces me that the problem lies elsewhere.

I like sheep and lambs.  I like the countryside and especially the hills.  I have given my life to the Lamb of God who sacrificed his life for me. So the themes in the song can hardly be the problem.

I have concluded that the problem with Tynan's poem, a problem reinforced by Robertson's mood music, is that it evokes pity for the crucified Christ.  And this is not at all what should happen.

Yes, lambs are pitiful, but the Lamb of God who died was not to be pitied.  Did he not quell the women of Jerusalem's tears and tell them to weep for themselves and their children?  The pity in the Passion is all ours, his is the pain, the sacrifice, the slaughter.  

And the salvation.  It is not of any note that He died between two crosses on a hill: he died between two condemned sinners who were on crosses.  In the end the song takes away the power of the cross and replaces it with pity.  Perhaps that is what I find, pitiful lamb that I am, so pitiful about it.