What’s wrong with the world?

​I commented last Sunday in worship that the world might change while we are in church. Last weekend I had to rewrite my sermon after I heard the news that bombs were flying about and the world suddenly changed as I heard the ten o clock news. In a world of social media and 24 hour news the events in the world are in our face. Growing up we heard the news once a day.  A generation before, you gathered round the radio. A stark example is families listening to Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister on 3 September 1939. Another was the death of Princess Diana in August 1997. I was about to share in my first ever service as a minister that morning. Another was 9/11. That was my first encounter with rolling news on the TV, the planes going into those towers played over and over again. My late Uncle George used to sit watching rolling news for hours. My Aunt would get exasperated - “turn it off George!” she’d yell. 

It’s easy to despair about the events that suddenly unfold around us as we feel helpless. I don’t like the tone coming out of America. “We are knocking the crap out of them” are not words an American President used to say until we had this one.

 I felt the need to pray tonight so as I’m on holiday but still at home until tomorrow as I had to wait for a parcel which should have come on Saturday I went and did  evensong in in our cathedral. It was sung beautifully by the choir of Barnard Castle School including the fab “if you love me” by Thomas Tallis.

Evensong allowed me space to think. Where is God in all this? Psalm 74, which was sung tonight, included a plea to God - “O God, how long shall the adversary reproach? Shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever? Why withdrawest thou thy hand, even thy right hand? Pluck it out of thy bosom! “They” want God to deal with the enemy, and I guess that prayer is being prayed by fundamentalists in America, and in Israel and in Iran and in Lebanon tonight. “The enemy” have no name, they are just there to be crushed because we are right and God is on our side. Even on Sunday in worship the music group as an opening song had one which said God “aids us against the enemy.”

We also tonight prayed “give peace in our time o Lord,  because there is none other the fighteth for us, but only thou O God.” And there was a weird reading from 1 Chronicles where the angel wanted to destroy a nation and God says “back off” there’s always grace!

I just wonder whether God is weeping tonight. We never learn. Yes, there are evil regimes in the world but you can’t just decide you’ll drop a bomb on them, can you? Clearly you can! 

In despair it’s so hard to see how we can make a difference in a war torn world which has people caught up in it suddenly in many different countries. What do we do?

We must pray for peace - that’s something we can do. What we can also do is try and make a difference where we are making good relationships and working for justice and respect where we are. It may mean we look at our behaviours and seek renewal from God.

The story is told that the Times at one point early in the 1900s posed this question to several prominent authors: “What’s wrong with the world today?” The well-known author G.K. Chesterton is said to have responded with a one-sentence essay: His witty reply is unnerving and unexpected. But it is also very biblical. We take responsibility. As the old song says “let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”

_Dear Sir,
__I am.
_Yours, G.K. Chesterton.