July consumer prices rise as demand increases...
Train derails in Aberdeenshire...
Women feel unsafe in German cities...
Man dies of plague in New Mexico...
Sussex homes continue without water in heatwave...
Teenage girls beat pigeon and tare off its wings...
UK economy shrinks more than any Western country...
I sat on the bus heading home from work, in the midst of summer. Normally, the streets would be humming with people, but once you were away from the main shopping centre, the pavements were almost entirely empty, as were the buses. The height of the season, and we're in a state of almost complete severance from what was.
I guess its just the Lockdown, but everything seems to be more acute, more distressing, because of where we are.
I guess its just the Lockdown, but everything seems to be more acute, more distressing, because of where we are.
It isn't just what I feel either.
At work one day this week, I suddenly found myself in the midst of a spontaneous conversation with several others where all the fears, the anxieties, the concerns and the observations I had been keeping to myself came out corporately and we found ourselves looking at each other, shocked and undone at the state of things, which are clearly in meltdown.
It's not that there haven't been troublesome moments before. Most of us recall 2008 and the struggles it brought, but that was little more than a jolt compared to the magnitude of what is happening now... continually.
This, then, has the feel, the fibre of something far more malevolent than what has gone before, because the truth is those in charge don't know how to respond. The entire world appears to have been poisoned and left comatosed, and there is no clear way to wake it from its dangerous nightmare.
Christians are, it appears, in places, beginning to at least wrestle with the ramifications of this affliction and ask why isn't the church there, front and centre, being seen to be far more engaged in this crisis. If this is, at the least, a death sentence for the weak and the old or, possibly, the death knell for a culture, the church has the only remedy of any value, so this isn't a moment for it to be seen as something that is fading into the background of having little to offer.
What troubles me most is the secularism of our response. When I met with minister this week, he was quick to remind me that the majority of people would think it absolutely ridiculous to be talking about angels and demons, but as another minister stated in a live cast in America this week, this really isn't just a struggle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in high places, and the church is meant to be a company who are very aware of his diabolical devices.
The ministry of Jesus was often quick to unmask such evil, often dragging evil into the light, kicking and screaming. Such moments shake us, but they also show us that these malicious undercurrents are terribly real.
What the world needs is a health that cures the real virus.
What troubles me most is the secularism of our response. When I met with minister this week, he was quick to remind me that the majority of people would think it absolutely ridiculous to be talking about angels and demons, but as another minister stated in a live cast in America this week, this really isn't just a struggle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in high places, and the church is meant to be a company who are very aware of his diabolical devices.
The ministry of Jesus was often quick to unmask such evil, often dragging evil into the light, kicking and screaming. Such moments shake us, but they also show us that these malicious undercurrents are terribly real.
What the world needs is a health that cures the real virus.
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