THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
The Rt Rev James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool
16th August 2005
Good Morning
The only piece of the plane that failed to disintegrate when Flight HCY522 crashed
into a hillside in Greece was its blue tail. It juts out of the hill like an
instant memorial to the tragedy that on Sunday claimed 121 people including
48 children. The head of Helios, the Sun God, which was painted in gold on the
side of the tail,, lies on the ground.
His crumpled face speaking, without words, of pain and pity that will be the
food day and night for family and friends. The horror of this accident, as we
imagine the last terrifying moments of this fateful flight, obscures the fact
that millions of people everyday fly in thousands of planes safely and without
incident.
But this and every calamity challenges anybody who’s ever prayed –
and that’s probably most of us since praying isn’t limited to signed-up
believers,.
What was God thinking as he heard the pleas of these and other terrified victims?
And for those of us, who’ve ever claimed that God has from time to time
answered our own prayers, we’re in the double-bind of explaining why he
came to our aid and not to theirs. Our doubts are fuelled by having a picture
of God dwelling in some trouble-free paradise watching us sweating it out on
this war-torn earth.
But the vision of God given us by Jesus is very different. It’s much nearer
that of the crumpled face of Helios lying headlong down the hillside in Greece.
Jesus said ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them
falls to earth without the Father.’ Here’s a vision of God himself
falling from the skies to the earth to suffer alongside all his creatures. That’s
a very different picture from the one of God as the detached problem-solver.
An experienced mother told me once that she reckoned that she’d had her
appendix out four times. One for herself and one for each of her children. Such
is the power of empathy, the power of compassionate imagination you can so identify
with someone you love that you almost feel the pain yourself.
If God is able to identify so strongly with all his creatures then in a sense
he must never be without pain. Far from inhabiting a trouble-free paradise he
must be totally and always acquainted with our grief and sorrows. Which is the
state we find him in when we turn to him in prayer.
Christians and others long for that day when God will wipe every tear from our eyes, when death will be no more and mourning and crying and pain will be things of the past. If we who suffer from time to time long for this how much more must God, who we believe carries the suffering of the whole world, ache for such a day.