Perspective
When I read the ongoing news of violence and destruction from India, the emotion I feel is heartbreak. When I hear about the suffering in cities like Mosul, I can’t help but feel sorrow. These events, and so many others like them, are examples of the evil present in this world. I would imagine that you have felt the same.
But that perspective is not the only one available. Some Hindu leaders in India, for instance, are holding up the Orissa violence as a model of what a state should be. “We will make our district like Orissa,” they have pledged. That horrifying violence, the destruction and slaughter, is their idea of what constitutes good.
I should not be surprised, I suppose, that this perspective is alive and well - without it, there would be no persecution! - but seeing it displayed in such brazen prominence is a wake up call. Evil is alive and well, and there are those that are so deceived as to think that it is their calling to persecute our brothers and sisters in Christ.
But truth does not depend on our perspectives, and as we minister and pray we can do so in the confidence that we are serving the God of that truth. Let us pray with that confidence against the evil that pervades this world of ours.