That horror has been mirrored/ commented upon and generally magnified by the variety of comments posted by any number of my FaceBook Friends. Some I have heartily condoned - these have called for prayer, for love and for support. Others have disturbed me - for they contained great violence - not physical obviously - but verbal abuse: using swear words; calling for dire punishments; angry, angry words which I find I cannot support at all.
Which has led me to reflect further about how we apportion blame, and how we respond when we see injustice and conflict, especially when it is on our own doorstep.
I am not ashamed to be British; I am saddened that a few hundreds out of the 65 million inhabitants of our land have managed to tar everyone with the same brush:
it isn't every young person in England;
it isn't every minority group;
it is just a small section of the community who see no hope, no future and have grabbed an opportunity to jump on the bandwagon: there was an interview with a young man in Manchester on the news this morning, his attitude:
"well if I can get free stuff, I'm going to... I don't have a criminal record, what they going to do about it?!"
Like many I remember the 80s, and the 70s and the riots that happened then - there was unemployment, recession, fear and it led to great unrest and disturbance
This morning I once again turned to the wisdom writings and again I read:
"Whatever is has already been,(Ecclesiastes 3)
and what will be has been before
and God will call the past to account...
God will bring to judgement both the righteous and the wicked,
for there will be a time for every activity
a time for every deed"
We have seen it before; we will see it again
We will recover
We will prevail
We have seen hundreds of people resonding positively - getting organised to clear up, to work together - to bring hope to the hopeless... concentrate on that and remember the Wise Teacher!
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