vinculafido

  Anxiety.   It’s everywhere.   The invasion of Ukraine: the threat posed by China to Taiwan and the South China Seas:   the rise of new brands of nationalism: the apparently spiralling conflict in the Middle East as a result of the October 7 th atrocity: ‘where will Putin will go next?’: World War 3: ‘conscription’: the ‘Doomsday Clock’ currently set at ninety seconds to midnight. Intelligent parents and children having the sort of discussion we had with our mums and dads in 1962. Single seniors, listening to the radio, watching the telly, reading the papers.   Worry, worry, worry… and that’s before you look at your bills. My own mum, struggling with the cancer which was to kill her at a young middle-age, used to sing the old chorus: ‘ Why worry, when you can pray/Trust Jesus: he’ll find a way/Don’t be a doubting Thomas/rest surely on his promise/Why worry, worry, worry, worry, when you can pray’. Walking is good for the blood pressure.   I park up in...

  In March 1997, looking up at the necklace of lights in the hill settlements above the road from Ben Gurion airport, and then again, as our Israeli tour guide reminisced and enthused about his outstanding part in the 1967 ‘liberation’ of Jerusalem, I remember prophesying that I’d never return to the Holy Land as a pilgrim.   For once I was right.   Along with many others I’ll never again visit a country where right-wing extremist politicians, emboldened by Netanyahu, brazenly talk about replicating the slaughter of the ‘Amalekites’, and where Christians also are now sometimes harassed near the holy sites.   Israeli nationalists are making it ‘their’ place alone, and not our collective protection within a proud, sovereign nation, who own a sound moral compass where all the ‘people of the book’ are honoured and welcome. Perhaps it was never thus, but for a while we bought into the dream.   Didn’t you? The Church Times has caught onto this, and in its most rece...