Is This My Father's World?

I’m getting depressed… really, really depressed. I look at the situation in the Middle East and the ripples that are being sent all across the world, not least in Malaysia, and I get frustrated. More demonstrations. More propaganda. More anger and hatred. The world is taking sides, while more and more people are dying. I look at the situation in our own country and I feel even worse. Article 11, racial and religious tensions, people inciting anger, Lina Joy, the Ethnic Relations textbook, demonstrations against Israel and the US… Everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else. No one wants to look at themselves. All are blinded by their own biasness and anger. “We are always right. They are wrong. We’re the good guys. They’re the bad guys.” All I see is hypocrisy. What is happening to our country? What is happening to our world? I got so worked up over these issues today as I pored through news websites and web logs. Feelings of frustration are welling up again as I write. As feelings of despair threaten to overwhelm me, I find myself humming the old, old hymn - This is My Father’s World. Am I trying to comfort myself? As the world heads into a downward spiral, I hang on to the words in the third verse –

This is my Father’s world.
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world:
the battle is not done:
Jesus Who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.

What is a Christian to do in all this? Do we shrug it off and say it’s none of our business? Do we take sides? I believe strongly that the task of a follower of Christ is not to be ignorant, nor to take sides, but to stand in the middle of it all – the brokenness, the wars, the barriers, the anger and the hatred – and to be God’s agents of healing and reconciliation, even if it means risking scorn and ridicule from both sides (even from other Christians!); even if it means that in the process we ourselves are crushed to death by the weight of it all… This is the cross we have to bear…

And this work begins when we admit that deep down in our own hearts, we are capable of the same sins that we see in the world; the same hypocrisy; that we ourselves need forgiveness just as much as anyone else. Then only can we pray… and be the voice of love that the world desperately needs… the fingerprints of God in a world bereft of hope…