Dear Friends,

Over Remembrance I kept asking myself what was actually achieved at the end, say, of the First World War. Despite all that immense fire-power and the millions of men involved, what was there to show for it all? The same question can be asked of the Second World War. Though we ‘won’, Britain and the Empire were broken by it, and the only real winner was Josef Stalin who scooped up Eastern Europe for Communism.

Guns aren’t really that powerful, are they? Nor is money. In these last few months we have seen fortunes lost, and money pass through people’s hands like water. We have lived to see the power of money and the power of arms exposed as pretty flimsy in fact. It made me think of words of St. Paul:

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.
On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
(2 Corinthians 10.3-4).

One of the great masters of the short story was the Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges, who died in 1986. His poem, The Just, is so simple, yet so devastating.

A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished. 
He who is grateful for the existence of music. 
He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology. 
Two workmen playing, in a cafe in the South, a silent game of chess. 
The potter, contemplating a colour and a form. 
The typographer who sets this page well though it may not please him.
A woman and a man, who read the last tercets of a certain canto.
He who strokes a sleeping animal.
He who justifies, or wishes to, a wrong done him.
He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson.
He who prefers others to be right.     
These people, unaware, are saving the world.

It’s not the gun-men, and the money-people who are saving the world. Those with real power are the gentle ones. Now that we are in Advent preparing for the coming of Jesus to this sad and broken world, I could not help thinking of this wonderful poem. Who really has power? 2,000 years ago, was it King Herod with all his laws, soldiers, and wealth? Or was it a vulnerable baby shut out from every inn in crowded Bethlehem?

That’s a historical, not a religious, question. As a matter of fact, King Herod’s achievements have now crumbled to dust. It was the baby who changed the world. Indeed, it’s only because of the baby that we know about King Herod at all! It’s the meek who actually inherit the earth.

By way of commentary on Borges’ poem I would place next to it the words of Isaiah 42.2-3, which speak of God’s Servant:

He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be  heard in the street.
A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.

Perhaps the Christmas story is now too familiar, but it challenges the values and priorities of this world with its odd sense of what power is. The infant born in Bethlehem to conquer the world reminds us that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, not his ways our ways (Isaiah 55.8).

May God richly bless you this Christmas-time.

Very sincerely Yours,