November 2023
Dear Friends
On 12th
November many will gather at our village war memorials just before 11am to
remember with gratitude and sadness the sacrifice of those who defended our
nation and allies when conflict engulfed the world. We would like to think that such cataclysmic
days are long past but I doubt it.
Our relationship with creation is broken too. I’m not talking about our current climate panic
but our long-term world-wide struggle to produce the food and other resources
that we need without despising or desecrating all that God has made. I’m writing from a cottage on the Outer
Hebrides and it is sobering to see what it took for crofters to live here in this
cold, boggy, weather-beaten land.
Then there is our relationship with ourselves. How many of us are happy with who we are and
feel at peace with ourselves? Sometimes
our anger and frustration with others springs out of our disappointment with
ourselves. Why do I find it so hard to
change? We are, so often, our own
greatest enemy.
But the root of all this brokenness, according to the
diagnosis of the Bible, is a much, much deeper fracture - our broken
relationship with our creator. We
complain that he is distant and unwilling to help us or we complain about the unjust
way he runs his world, but mostly we suppress all knowledge of him not wanting
to serve and worship him as we instinctively know we should. He seems nothing like a ‘heavenly Father’ to
us. We cannot fix this fracture from our
side. But what if God made the move from
his side, what if he has stepped across the barbed-wire border to offer peace
with his wayward creatures? What if reconciliation
with him is the essential first step to a long slow mending of all the
fractured relationships with each other, with creation and with ourselves? What if the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has
plans for deep peace on earth?
Sincerely
Graham Burrows