When the world is in turmoil: Friday 13th November 2015

Something awful has happened in recent days. Awful and shocking enough that capital cities all over the western world are changing their nightly illuminations to reflect a spirit of one-ness with the nation that drapes itself in a blue-white-red flag. The seven attacks across the city known for love sealed off the lives of at last count 129, maimed another 350 unique and normal people, shattered a much greater number of dreams and hopes, and devastated the hearts of loved ones and indeed, the whole nation that is called France.

It’s remarkable that this horrific event has occurred in the wake of Remembrance Day which earlier this week, called all us Australians to a moment of solemnity. Out of this association arises a call I am driven to echo: Let us not be a people that are stubborn in solely self-focussed patriotism, but rather, let us be swayed by the storms that unrelentingly cause severe suffering to named human souls with whom we share this planet.

Many voices are clamouring that suffering is not isolated to France and are disheartened by the attention it has drawn from the western audience. I do, however appreciate that this is for many, more close to home. We all know French people. N’est-ce pas?  En fait, I have two very close French friends and more who have each imprinted upon my life. Just a few weeks ago I spent a beautiful evening dining in Frankston’s new French restaurant with friends, making plans to get the “French Breakfast” flavour into T2 and laughing at one another’s impersonations of French dialogue. I know a few people travelling within Paris currently, and the culture I’m part of values individual people and lives so strongly, every single one. We do care if a single life ends prematurely, not just if a community or population’s mark is erased. That’s our mentality. Our Christian heritage, as a western country, has sewn into us a God-given appreciation for the sacredness and value of every single human life. Personally, my heart feels a heavy weight as I think of the paramedics, nurses, and emergency personnel, and try to envision what it’d be like to walk a few steps in their shoes, en route to the mass casualty incidents of this weekend. The job you train specifically for but never think will eventuate. Ironically the colours of Ambulance Victoria and the career I’ve spent four years with my heart set on, mirror the blue white and red of the French flag. It’s something I notice. I wonder if in such a time as this, it’s a feeble sympathy that causes these connections to surface. 

Yes, I’ve travelled to Egypt, Israel, the Middle East, to nations of Southern Africa; I have close friends who have escaped the increasingly commonplace terror oppressing these countries. Yet France has infiltrated our culture in some unique ways and that is what I want to capture amongst the outcry that white skinned people only care for fellow white skins.

(I will definitely write further on this so stay tuned...)

This afternoon as I jogged the familiar route responsible for my fitness, Casting Crowns broke my rhythm with the soaring melody that is “White Dove Fly High” (lyrics only). I was reminded through the opening lyrics that as inhabitants of this earth we are many peoples, but we are human; and we express the same emotions yet through different syllables and sounds. The fourth stanza drew my eyes to a blue sky, then the imagination of a white dove and then my mind immediately contrasted with this the shed blood of many quenched souls laying upon French soil; White. Red. Hope juxtaposed with tragedy in the French flag.  Blue. A sky under which all of humanity, and indeed we Australians, stand. 

As a sister, a daughter, I mourn for each single life that was lost last Friday and for the families that the bullets broke. I hope that they had a trust in Jesus Christ, a relationship with the Spirit of God who descended in dove-like form, whose peace, whose calm refuge and shelter promises victory, purity, unity, beauty: under whose wings the scared soul is safely hidden even in storms. In death such a believer makes the passage to eternal life, the early ending of their earthly life a loss only to we who are left behind. It is Jesus who stirs me to weep with those who weep; to mourn with those who mourn, and this I do in contemplative humility. How do we honour each life? By giving time. By setting aside moments of respect to take in the loss, and then to take out a deepened gratitude for blessings and freedom and a reinforced resolve to overcome evil with good, to live peacefully, to love our neighbour, to speak up for the oppressed and fight for what’s right.

This world is stuffed. Natural disasters, global warming, and today’s unsurpassed human depravity signpost decay. Where is hope now, where is hope here, when a world is catastrophized by an abundance of evil that is evident just this weekend in ISIS, in Boko Haram, in Japan’s earthquake, Baghdad’s funeral bombing, Beirut’s suicide bombing, Mexico’s earthquake? In my contemplation I read a truth that radically, makes me rejoice: that “the Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the PRESENT EVIL AGE, according to the will of the God who is our Father” (Galatians 1:3-4).
Thinking of the cross, I am taken to the feet of the most glorious king and the most humble human and I realise that there Jesus’ arms are spread wide, opened up to embrace me and to embrace my fellow Aussie, my French brother, and every other member of the human race. 

I hope and pray that (like the song lyrics) this country’s clean and blue skies should be cloudy and grey not forever. That what I hear about France will give me thoughts of wings of hope spreading wide, a white dove dancing, flying free and happily. What I am praying for is heaven - and whilst that can only be reached from the other side of death, we can receive that heavenly experience in daily life through the invitation of Jesus to live within us and transform us with His powerful love. The city of love is injured yet through this God I have love within me that could not be displayed by even the greatest human city.

~ His perfect love alone drives out fear ~