After hearing about the Manchester attack, I was thinking about the growing number of terrorist attacks we are seeing and hearing about these days; there doesn’t seem to be anywhere that is untouched.
[This post seems even more poignant now after the attack at London not 2 days ago. I was writing it as the attacks were happening!]
I find it so sad to see the hurt and pain people are willing to cause each other. Especially when they claim they are doing it in the name of a divine being!
Unfortunately this is a repeating pattern throughout history; people claiming their acts of violence in the name of the divine. Yet underneath this zealous religiosity is normally a more vain, self-centred and very human desire; power.
In complete contrast, what I believe does show something of the divine is the beautiful acts of compassion and kindness that people demonstrate immediately after such monstrous acts are perpetrated.
The way societies minister to each other; the homeless giving first aid support, strangers looking out for strangers and celebrities instantly changing their schedules to put on a massive charity event in support of the people affected. All of the divisions that day-to-day separate us, completely vanish in that instant. Instead of ‘them’ we just see ‘our own’ hurt and in need.
It seems that not only inspite of, but as a direct result of such grotesque acts of violence, beautiful acts of love shine and sparkle all the more in the darkness, bringing people closer together.
That for me is the divine in action.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.“
John 1:5
WIDE OPEN PLANES 