Broken Relationships

This morning I was reading from Romans 12 in which Paul says that we are not to let evil overcome us and "as far as it depends on you be at peace with all men". In the last while we in Belfast have been engulfed in evil and have been experiencing a mighty web of tangled relationships. None of this tangle was made by us, we have inherited it from a previous generation. We have been experiencing the results of that web so that there is a total breakdown in our society between various factions; between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics, between the differant loyalist factions and between the government and the unionist people not to mention the breakdown between the police and the loyal sons of ulster. I use the various names to illustrate the nature of the web and the complications cretaed. All of this means that there is no simple solution yet we have to struggle to find a way of living together in respect and peace.

Then this afternoon I had a meeting with some community leaders and a little light has begun to shine and evil is not just as prevalent. in that meeting it was decided to sponsor a time of prayer and reflection in our church on Saturday morning!


There is much anger in the community in which I live and work and it is an anger by various differing people for various reasons. There are those who are angry at the peace decifit being experienced by the unionist community who see themselves as the sacrificial lambs being led to the slaughter by the British government and some unionist MPs. They think that violence has been seen to pay and so they have turned to that route but they have failed to see that violence has produced another kind of fruit where families are in crisis and anti-social behaviour is rife in the lives of many of the young people who have been allowed to roam the streets. They are the christians and the more right wing thinking people. The big question for every Christian is how do we support the community without being pompous and condemnatory and how do we maintain the standards lived and declared by Christ?


On Saturday we will pray and we will encourage the community to pray with us and ask God to do His work among us even if that means Him doing things which we will not even like. At the heart of our problems is an evil and a sin which must be dealt with. there are those who consider that these are days of exile for western Christians and we need to learn how to function as Christians in exile which is very different to Christians in "Christendom". Yet even in exile Christ is still King and God has not gone away"

One of the casualties in all of this is the Christian witness of a professed Christian order. The Orange Order stands for religious and political freedom and every new member pledges to be a Christian by profession of his lips and lifestyle.