Half-time: June reflections

It has been many months since I have felt the compulsion to write. The pace has certainly picked up, in every arena of my life – in my journalistic work, in our work as a community of believers, in the acquaintances, friendships and relationships I have strengthened since returning from Singapore in February.

I can liken it to an accelerated learning course, where the intensity and richness of my experiences have been concentrated and crammed into a short six months. I have been hurried from one listening point to the next, and it is almost bewildering some days, as I seriously wonder, what’s next? What will I make of these seeds when they germinate and grow?

Since February, I have revelled in the gurgling joys of new life. But I have also come face to face with the pain of loss, and the prospect of imminent death.

I have been heartbroken by some of the mistakes we have made in our lifetime, which for some, holds consequences which are irreversible, which offer no reprieve, and which we will spend our whole lives paying for, despite the repentant state of our hearts.

With much sorrow, my eyes have also been made keenly aware of the injustice and inequality that surrounds us – between the rich and poor, the mighty and the meek, the shrewd and the naïve, the bureaucrats and the common people. I cannot run away from the stark realisation that there are those – and indeed there are many – in the developing nations and war-torn countries, where concerns over food, housing, hygiene and money are framed in a radically different context from us middle-upper class folk in the western developed nations.

I am grateful for theologians like Tom Wright who have been able to articulate the cries and groans that I have struggled to put into words. It is a deep ache that resonates from deep within me, a burden that I have been unable to lift, or shrug off.

But I suspect that is precisely the point.

I cannot be Christian by simply ignoring the gruesome realities that our insular western world soothes and placates us with the distractions of Hollywood culture, drawing us into a world of reel-life and make believe. We bite at the carrot that materialism dangles before us, as our common-prayer becomes I want, I want, I want.

But I will drown in despair and despondency looking upon these disparities that plague our world knowing that I can do little about it, and man’s good work so far – through NGO’s like the UN, WHO, World Vision and the like – have been painfully slow.

To borrow Wright’s words from his book, Surprised by Hope, it is no good being Christian if we are unsure about the ultimate future hope held out in the Christian gospel: the hope, that is, for salvation, resurrection, eternal life, and the cluster of other things that go with them.

And with that, it is about the discovery of hope within the present world: about the practical ways in which hope can come alive for communities and individuals who for whatever reason may lack it.

What lies beyond death?

How do we rediscover hope in the public and political world?

As a writer, a writer who is Christian in a public world, I am also now thoroughly convinced of the need for a new language when it comes to articulating our hope – putting away our colloquialism, the Christianese dialect that we speak to one another.

If we are the signposts that point to a future hope, than our signs must be discernible to the sojourner, the passerby, the confused traveller looking for direction.