Do you ever feel like you just want a break from life?
I am a morning person. It’s the time of day when I feel most alert and clear-headed. This morning my thoughts turned to the heaviness of another tragedy, this time in the home city of my brother and his family (they’re all ok; they were nowhere near Pulse nightclub at the time).
What happened on the weekend in Orlando was of course tragic in the most terrible sense. It’s wearying. And I feel even more weary when I see Christians on both the left and right of the political debate putting forward their views on how the killings in Orlando are and will be reported by different media outlets.
I just want to reflect on the fact that 50 people lost their lives. At a time like this I don’t care for the point-scoring arguments of whether the left will always say that Muslims are being vilified or the right saying that we don’t talk enough about Islamic violence.
Violence of any kind, no matter who commits it, is wrong and destructive of life. I just want peace at this time. The world needs it. We all need it. At such a dark time as this I am reminded of the pleading words of Rodney King after the LA riots of 1992: can we all just get along?
Another Easter has come and gone. As we reflect on what it means 2,000 years after the event, I am reminded that the circumstances in which the world finds itself in today, early in the 21st century, are similar to that in which the first Christians found themselves 2,000 years ago.
