The Eye That Cries

Not really feeling well - I have a cold.... waaaaaaaahhhhh. But sitting in bed with my computer so I might as well write what I have been thinking about the last few days. Even if it might be a bit fuzzy like my head.

So on Tuesday I went to hear Joel Edwards speak about Justice as the Mission of God. He is such a good speaker, very engaging, warm, persuasive, positive... and he packs a lot in. He was the Director of Evangelical Alliance for ten years and is now head of the Micah Challenge, which bases its work on the verse in Micah 6:8 which I wrote about before.

He said just what I used to think, that many Christians see justice as a hobby horse for some, like the environment used to be (?) seen too. But his main point was, that justice should be part of the Christian life we live, for all of us, just as much as our personal devotion. He said that we have tended to make Christianity a matter of private relationship with God, but it should equally be a matter of a public citizenship in the world.

He said how we love to talk about the holiness and righteousness God requires of us, but we don't focus much on the justice, which is also and equally there. And that they should be integrated as the way we live out the Christian life, and not in three separate boxes.

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. Ps 89:14

Micah Challenge have put together a dvd package called The Jesus Agenda, which is a resource for home groups and churches or anyone else to use, to think through issues of justice and how we can live more integratedly like this.

We saw one small section of it, and one thing we saw impacted me greatly. The section was set in Lima, Peru, and how a group there work with the poor and also in the wealthy communities, to bring in more community and unity. The film crew visited a monument in Lima called El Ojo que Llora = the Eye that Cries - which is a stone sculpture, surrounded by a labyrinth of stones each with the name and dates of a person who died/disappeared during the years of the Shining Path resistance movement, between 1980 and 2000. About 70,000 were killed altogether on both sides of the conflict. The black stone in the centre of the monument has water constantly pouring from it - the eye that cries.

The monument moved me so much because it reminded me powerfully that God weeps when there is violence and hostility. It makes God mourn when there is injustice, when innocent people die. He weeps over the many many deaths in every conflict. How can I be so hard and dry-eyed? Is there anything I can, should, be doing to bring more peace, reconciliation, justice, in my sphere of the world at least?