Hello.
It was so spectacularly beautiful! It was a clear blue-sky day as I walked along the “no- man’s land” between Rwanda and the DRC. To my right was Lake Kivu, a sparkling jewel in that war-torn region.
That was about 20 years ago and now the fighting is back. History seems to be repeating itself again. History does that, doesn’t it? And it begs the question: when will we ever learn? What’s happening now in that area is like a microcosm, a tiny illustration, of the growing international tensions driven by our greed for wealth and status.
The Bible is full of stories about war, conflict, and the lust for power. You’d expect it to be different, perhaps, but it’s only a reflection of the human condition, of man’s inhumanity to man. Why were such things recorded in such a holy book? The biblical writer and commentator Paul tells us that they were noted so we could learn from them. “All these things”, he wrote, “happened to them as examples—as object lessons to us—to warn us against doing the same things; they were written down so that we could read about them and learn from them in these last days as the world nears its end” (1 Corinthians 10:11 TLB).
Maybe it’s time for us and our leaders to learn some of those lessons before it all gets much worse?
Best regards,
James
About the Writer:
James Henderson is a Minister in Grace Communion International.