Diocese of Liverpool

Thought for the Day, 17 November 2004

Good Morning,

which seems such a hollow greeting with the likely news of Margaret Hassan's cruel death. The dawn of a new day must feel like a never-ending night for her husband and family. They've waited with a dreadful dignity for news of her, and now her husband pleads simply for the return of her body, the one he promised 'to have and to hold - til death us do part'.

And the poor and the sick, and the children will grieve for this child of God who devoted her life to them. As I thought of their mourning for her words culled from a Middle Eastern prophet came to mind.

a voice was heard in Rama
wailing and loud lamentation
children weeping for Margare
They refused to be consoled because she was no more

Of course, such cruelty goes on all the time, and over the world. Only a few capture the headlines and the imagination of so many. I was on this programme only weeks ago, together with the leader of the Muslim community in Liverpool, pleading for the life of Ken Bigley. We appealed for mercy in the name of God, the Merciful One. But our pleas, and those for Margaret Hassan, could not penetrate the darkness, shrouding the imagination of the kidnappers.

Deaf, they could not hear the emotion in the voices of their loved ones.

Blind, they could not see that here was a person loved - by the poor, by the children, by the God of love and mercy.

The callous brutality of the executions reveals a calloused heart and a stunted imagination.

Here are human beings unable to place themselves in the shoes of those they kidnap and kill. For how could they possibly do what they do if they could actually feel the screaming agony of their captives?

Their imaginations must have died on them, before they dealt death to their victims.

This is strangely both depressing and helpful. The depravity of humanity has left its fingerprints on every page of our history. But written on the same page are the stories of people who have changed and turned; those whose imaginations have come alive and begun to see the world differently, to feel love, not hatred, to seek peace, not turmoil.

That's why Jesus told us to pray for those who treat us cruelly, so that the eyes of their imagination might be opened to see that whatever they did to the least of these his brothers and sisters they did, in fact, to him.