Priorities

It’s been a momentous few weeks. It hasn’t just affected the money markets and the affluent financial traders of the West. It has reverberated around the world. As each bank has collapsed, many people have lost employment, others have lost their savings and untold other institutions and companies have failed to be paid, putting their security in jeopardy also.

It’s like being a helpless, wobbly domino in a game of knock the dominoes over and see how many are left standing at the end. No-one seems to know where it will all end and no-one seems to be able to say how  much it will all affect the very poorest at the bottom of the trickle-down effect.

One result of all the financial problems is that it has pushed other things out of the news. There are some parts of the world for which worries about high finance are not much of an issue. Life and death are the issue. Truth is pitted against false accusations and intolerance and violence push everything else away.

One such place is Orissa in

India

. It’s a place where there is resentment amongst some of the Hindu population against the Christians in the area. The Christian church there is a growing presence and it is seen, by some, as a threat to the traditional way of life. It didn’t take much to develop that sense of insecurity into outright fear and then to express that fear in violence.

On August 23rd, a Hindu priest and four of his attendants were gunned down by unknown assailants. Lacking any evidence as to the true nature of the attackers, people jumped to conclusions. In hardly any time, the Christians were being blamed and the cry rose up ‘Kill the Christians!’ Mob violence took over. Hundreds of Christian churches were blown up or burned down. Dozens of Christians, especially in the tribal areas, were killed, for no reason other than they professed the name of Jesus.

Stories are emerging of Christian orphanages presently under siege by the mobs. More than 5,000 Christian families have had their homes destroyed. The government is trying to restore order but the police forces are small compared to the size of the mobs. All this has largely escaped the notice of the western media. We’ve been more focussed on our own financial problems and the political developments in the

USA

.

Perhaps we need to re-align our sense of priorities.

Actually, I find that re-aligning my priorities is one of the things that God keeps on coming back to. It’s so easy to forget that people are more important than things, that Jesus is more important than anyone else, that loving other people is more needed than propping up our self respect and that offering the truth of the Gospel to others is more important than getting them to like us. I often have to be reminded of those things.

I hope the news is good this month in your neck of the woods but even if it isn’t, spare a prayer for those who have even worse things to cope with.

I pray for the strength to stand firm in Jesus, whatever is happening around us.

Liz Edwards