To love again, give again and care again

MEDITATION

IN the piece I wrote for this column in September there was, what I considered at the time, an unfortunate typographical error.

I had written about lamentation as a particular and appropriate expression of the profound feeling of anguish which can be experienced by both individuals and communities.

I had received a letter from a good friend in South Sudan in which he expressed his deep sense of pain and sorrow at the plight of the people of South Sudan. He associated his numbness of feeling with abandonment by God because of some un-repented sin in his own and in his nation’s past.

And that is where the typographical error occurred.

In the conversion of the article from the word processing package that I use to the publisher package used by Life and Work – the words un-repented sin appeared as unreported sin. It made me think of the confession box where sins, one by one, might be confessed to the listening ear of the Priest and it evoked the idea that something unreported might prevent the grace of God absolving the sinner. It will come as no surprise to any regular reader of this column that that theological proposition has no place in my world of ideas. However, this ‘typo’ (as it is called in the trade) brought to the surface a coincidental meaning, in some ways, more powerful than the one I had been trying to write about.

That is because one of the real sins of the tragic story of my friend and of South Sudan itself is that it goes largely unreported.

Our first world problems are as nothing compared to the agony of nations like South Sudan living with war, famine and economic ruin. At present, South Sudan, a mineral rich nation, seems to be of little interest to the rest of the world, because there are richer and easier pickings elsewhere.

On almost every index imaginable South Sudan comes out close to the worst in the world. It has the highest maternal mortality and female illiteracy rates in the world; its economy is one of the weakest; most of its villages have no electricity or running water and there is hardly a square mile of decent metal road throughout the country. Yet, very rarely is there a sentence in the news drawing attention to the everyday horrors, abuses and grinding poverty experienced by women and men who are our equals in humanity.

Truly the sin is that this goes unreported rather than un-repented.

The headlines these days all seem to be about how we can get the best deals out of our trading agreements across the world or how already powerful nations can become greater or prouder or stronger, and hardly a word about how we can change the life of the weakest or how we might make peace in forgotten places.

”Our first world problems are as nothing compared to the agony of nations like South Sudan living with war, famine and economic ruin.

It concerns me that so much of the public discourse panders to our selfish side and so little of the public voice calls on us as individuals and nations to be more thoughtful, generous, kind and self-giving.

The prophet Micah didn’t mince his words when setting out what it is that makes a person or a nation great, “O mortal” he asks, “what is good. And what does the LORD require of you?” answer: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

We need a bit more of that to turn the world around. If our leaders don’t possess these virtues and persist in pandering to popular demand then the poorest and weakest across the world will continue to be left behind in the human race.

I would like to hear someone call for South Sudan to be great again, for the weakest to be lifted out of poverty and given hope for a better future, but that will only happen if we are prepared to love again, give again and care again.

This article appears in the November 2018 Issue of Life and Work

Click here to view the article in the magazine.

To view other articles in this issue Click here.

If you would like to view other issues of Life and Work, you can see the full archive here.