Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Miracles of Community

This past Thursday we started on a 10-week journey, doing the Manna and Mercy programme. For those who are not familiar with this course, it is a striking course proclaiming God's work of reconciliation in a very broken world.

Here at the Glen, God is speaking to us again about COMMUNITY. Then, I watched a movie called "Crash" and I saw that COMMUNITY is not only spoken about in church, but is also something that Hollywood is aware of.

Switch on the news, and you find an obvious "LACK OF COMMUNITY" that results in strikes, war, discrimintation and all kinds of evil.

"Deus dixit!", Barth proclaimed. It is God who speaks, but speaking about what? Perhaps about being intentional in seeing my neighbour as my brother and sister.

That is hard to do. Being one of the victims of crime in our country, it is hard to even want to be in community. This is evident in my reaction to gunshots in the middle of the night, when without theological reflection I sometimes pray that the victims should hit their target. Perhaps the we will be able to sleep in peace?

God's miracle of community starts here, in my heart and in yours. Hopefully this miracle will grow to the extent that it captures Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, the States, Iraq, Africa...

Let us pray!

1 comment:

Rock in the Grass (Pete Grassow) said...

we used Manna and Mercy at Plumstead for Lent, and it was great. Preached the theme every Sunday and used the material for the small group reflection in the week.