August 6, 2014
Dear Friends,
I do my best to keep up with news around the church and the world, without being overwhelmed by it. A couple of weeks vacation - which happened to coincide with the Gaza-Israel war, the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, the painful arguments in the USA over immigration reform in the face of thousands of unaccompanied minors at the southern border, and the worst outbreak ever of the Ebola virus in West Africa - showed me that sometimes it is simply not possible to keep up with the news and remain unmoved. Or much more than that.
Sometimes I wonder what the events of this world look like on the celestial monitor. How does God see all this human pain and cruelty, misunderstanding and suffering? The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures indicate that the God of the universe is not only not indifferent to all this, but rather that God is vitally concerned. The lives of the prophets, and above all the life of Jesus the Christ, indicate that this God who is concerned is also willing to intervene.
"Willing" in continuing sense: God's will, I believe, is to intervene now. This divine intervention takes place with human cooperation. When I see and hear all that is happening, apparently for the bad, for the lessening of human unity, possibility, and joy, I see at the same time the Gospel of Christ in our hands inviting us, if we will, to a human life that is suffused with the divine. And I see as well a world filled with grace, with God's own loving presence, a grace often going unseen and ignored. Nonetheless, it is there. It is real. And it is an answer ultimately, if we took it seriously and took it to heart, to the increasing pain that cries out from brothers and sisters near and far.
May we be the people of Jesus. May the spirit of Christ live in us, be heard in us, bring hope through us and through all of every faith who will to hope.
Peace,
John+
The Very Reverend Canon John P. McGinty
Canon for Formation
Dean, Mercer School of Theology
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