In affliction I am presented with a choice: surrender to the hopelessness brought upon us or to reach for hope?()
Stan Grant says:
“This Holy Week I have sat with affliction.
I have pondered the great suffering and abandonment in our world.
I think of those who know war, famine, oppression; children torn from their families; those who die lonely deaths in dark places. Those who live under the yoke of injustice.
Why?
For a First Nations person and Christian there is no more chilling prayer than the prayer of the forsaken.
The French philosopher and Christian mystic, Simone Weil, called affliction “the chill of indifference”.
It is, she said, “the metallic chill that freezes all those it touches down to the depths of their soul”.
Affliction is the cold hand of fate. The afflicted know that cold touch. First Nations people, the poor, the sick. The LGBTIQA+ people recently attacked outside a church by others proclaiming the word of God.
Simone Weil said of affliction that it “is anonymous. It deprives the victims of their personality and turns them into things.”
The afflicted cry out: Where is God? How can a God who wills all, allow such horror?”
To read the full article go to:
As we debate the Voice, I can’t think of a more profound meditation than affliction – ABC News
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Thank you, Paul. Is it too much to hope for to think of Stan Grant as Australia’s very own, home-grown prophet? With his beautiful dark skin and twinkling blue eyes he engages everybody without crushing them, encouraging dialogue and cementing solutions not simply at the material level but also in ways that emphasise and augment our humanity. THAT is surely as Jesus would have wished. A HAPPY & HOLY EASTER TO ALL!
I think he is all that you say Michael and has lived the challenge of his people and retained a determination for good despite many set backs.