Inconvenient

As the week of weeks progresses we get into more difficult territory. All the movies and celebrities of our time will never really be able to convey the real horror, even with the lights out and a lot of beards. There are more authentic insights into the sense of hopelessness that was building up and overflowing then and continues now. See the photographs from any of the current war zones, the protests in Lhasa, the conditions in which whole communities live with rampant rates of HIV and AIDS. In some ways the horror is compounded by our ability in Britain to distance ourselves from most of this and to respond 'How awful' to the mildest forms of minor inconvenience like when the supermarket runs out of the product we wanted to buy. Just how awful is that?


How awful

Unable to cross the border into your own country,
unsure where to find clean water or medicine,
unlikely to be able to feed your family,
uncertain if you will be arrested for speaking out:
how much worse can it get?

Quite likely to loose your legs to a land mine,
have to carry your child to an under-equipped hospital
or get raped going to fetch water;
certain to be imprisoned illeagally for years and years:
reader be sure to understand.

Be sure to understand that all this and more
is happening today to someone like you,
with a life like yours,
in a country not far from here.

Will you wait until it happens to you
before you say anything?


[Mark 13:14-23]