Flashpoint

London burning! What a sight!
Sparks fly upwards in the night.
Hooded figures, mischief-bent,
Running, dangerous, violent;
Smashing, gashing, looting stores,
Grabbing, stealing, breaking laws;
Young and old, black and white
danced with Anarchy that night.

Things are getting out of hand
in this green and pleasant land.
Shame and blame! But I believe
We all are guilty!  Adam, Eve –
Snatched the apple from the Tree
Ignoring God – and choosing ‘ME’
………………………………………………………………………..
‘If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.’
 (2 Chronicles 7 v 14)

Jane Gransden

Here we are…

Ah we live in a world shot through with sin and failure,
fear and aggression,
turbulent with crises in gestation

How can we hope for the good
when we see so much deceit;
anticipate justice
when the plumb line does not hang straight.

And if we turn to look within,
there too  is dissonance,
an imbalance of forces swaying us about;
no easy ride to harmony.

“Beauty and brokenness,”
I say to myself, and over again ….
No logic to provide a neat solution;
no resolution;
but perhaps a first step to healing;
“beauty and brokenness”

Alan Amos

footnote : in Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel Peace prize address,   he began by referring to a brief and enigmatic quote from Dostoevsky : “the world will be saved by beauty”; Solzhenitsyn confesses that the phrase had puzzled and intrigued him for some time. And yet, he told the distinguished audience, he had come to believe that Dostoevsky was right. ~ And I would suggest that beauty is one of the forms in which we see Christ’s presence in the world, for he is the Word through whom all things were made. – Alan