Radio Leicester Thought
for the Day
© John Denney, 4 October
2000
Did you see those pictures yesterday of
our victorious Olympians returning from Sydney? Did you see
them, proudly holding out their gold and silver and bronze
medals? Did you see their smiles? As Katharine
Merry, bronze medallist in the 400m, said: “You'll see a
smile from us for a long time.”
Did you see those
other pictures? The picture of 12-year old Muhammad
al-Durrah hiding behind his father moments before four Israeli
bullets smashed into his young body and ripped his life away?
And then an ambulanceman trying to help is killed by another
Israeli fusillade. These were scenes of utmost horror.
To make it worse, the conflict was in Netzarim in the Gaza Strip,
part of what we call the Holy Land. The blood of the fifty
Palestinian dead this last week has defiled the very ground that
Jesus once walked.
And the cause of
the bloodshed is: who owns Jerusalem and the West Bank? Back
in the mists of time, God gave the land to Abraham’s
children. You can read all about it in the 12th
chapter of the book of Genesis. The trouble is that the
Palestinians and the Israelis both claim descent from Abraham.
They both claim to be Abraham’s children, so both claim to
own the land. And so they have fought for years, and they
continue to fight.
So here’s a question for you. What
better represents the aspirations of the six billion people who
populate the earth? Is it those who train and persevere and
strive to do their best and maybe even achieve their goals
through dedicated effort? Or is it those who turn to
weapons to pursue their ends, who seek to obtain by force what
their failure to negotiate denies them? In short, is it the
hopeful, or the hopeless who best represent
humankind?
I know which side
God is on. The apostle Paul sets it out quite neatly: I
keep working towards that day when I will finally be all that
Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be. No, dear
friends, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my
energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking
forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race
and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is
calling us up to heaven. [Philippians 4:12b-14, New
Living Translation]
And the question
I leave with you today is this: which side are you on?
Are you looking back, or are you moving forward?