Christian
Comment for 27th December 2014
Another
Christmas Day has been and gone. Some of us gathered in churches to welcome the
Baby Jesus – who became the man to show us what it means to be perfectly human.
Others agreed with the TV host’s announcement, welcoming the ‘silly season’; a
welcome break from work and school, catch up with family, and a chance to just
do what comes to mind.
And
the post-Christmas clock ticks on! 2014 will soon be history. When the clocks
chime at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and the either loved or tedious Alde Lang Sine is sung once again, it is
time for serious stock taking.
2014
was for our world a year of disasters! – One passenger airplane gone missing,
still a mystery; one passenger airplane shot down, being a victim of military
aggression; millions of hungry, homeless, hopeless, people. Many of them
exiles, who are too frightened to return to lands where terror and death stalk.
Isis – the inhuman killers who
blaspheme by taking Allah’s name in vain (Allah is the Arabic for “God’).
And
for Aotearoa New Zealand – the revelation that one quarter of the child
supporting population are seriously deprived. In the words of the Inter-Faith
Report, “One in five of our kids don’t have the fundamental essentials of life.”
A slogan from the 1930s is true once more: "The
rich get richer while the poor have children.”
So
let us not ignore the people outside our family circle, because the clock ticks
on and the grim events overseas and the present sad state in our country when
it comes to kids and housing, call us to get out of our comfort zone and act. A
men-created ‘doomsday’ can be prevented by our following
the caring model of Jesus.
May
2015 not be a replica of 2014, but the triumph of a caring humanity.
The Rev’d Petra
Barber is the vicar of the Gisborne Anglican Parish
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