While my children were coming into the age of responsibility I found myself asking them a question when they did something stupid. "What did you do that for?" After a while they decided to tell me my question was not very helpful! It took a while but I began to understand why,
i staggered into wakefulness this morning with the same question in my mind. "What the heck did you do that for?" In the face of a deeply divided nation, a hugely devalued pound, a plummeting stock market, and massive international incredulity it seems a reasonable question to ask. Why would people do something that seemed so obvious to me to be an act of self harm to everyone, let alone the poor, marginalised and vulnerable who will be most hit by the potential financial crisis?
But reasonable as that questions was, and indeed is today, I realise I didn't ask it to understand. It was asked to deflect, to criticise, to cast blame. And it was never a fruitful question to ask.
Struggling to make sense of what I personally feel to be a disaster, but to do that peaceably and draw people forward into a place of hope and healing, my question was as deeply unhelpful as it ever was.
I go into the day wth a tumult of emtions, questions, fears and uncertainties. But I also go in with the certainty of hope in Christ. And praying the prayer Jesus taught. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." When I pray that I'm standing amidst all the divisions, the brokenness, the pain, the crap that the world can throw at me. But I'm looking to a future world of healing, hope, freedom, justice and peace. It's not just pie in the sky. When Jesus taught us to pray that way he was telling us to pray for that future to become our reality on this earth here and now. I pray that a little of the hope of Gods future be here in our world today.
I choose today not to ask the reasonable question, to seek to blame others, but to seek to walk along with them into a world I didn't vote for, but which I share with them. There will be things I personally don't like but I'll need to get over that. I'll need to save my angst for the things I cannot agree with on ethical grounds and which I have to oppose.