I had the privilege of attending one of the best schools, bar none, not even the great Kingston College. And there at Jamaica College, I, and many other young men, who according to the late ” Jimmy MossSolomon, were trained to be leaders, committed to memory, ” The heights by great men reached and kept, were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night” ( Longfellow). We didn’t go there, as Bob Marley sang, ” to study war”, whether in Half-Way-Tree or elsewhere, to engage, over many days, in a battle with students from other schools, whether from, Calabar or St. George’s, or Campion College, or Kingston College, or, well Mona High, wasn’t even around as yet. So quo vadis, whence cometh this sustained madness which has been the ” talk of the town”, on mainstream and social media, for days. I can hear, in my imagination the cynic, the late Mutty Perkins, repeating ad nauseum
” Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,and everywhere, The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst, Are full of passionate intensity….” And the poet who Mutty favored, Yeats, continues:
” Surely some revelation is at hand,
Surely the Second Coming is at hand”.
Well, Yeats may very well be in sync with the feeling running through the minds of many evangelical Christians that these are the signs of the times. That ” Massa God soon come for his world. The challenge for the church, of which I am a very grateful part ( saved by grace) is how to respond to ” mere anarchy loosed upon the world”. Whether in Jamaica, in Haiti, in Gaza, in Israel or in Iran. Whether over a ” young girl”, or ” tribal war inna Babylon”.
I saw a video of one method by which the church can help this morning posted by a friend who is a pastor who has a ministry to rescue young men:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C58vP6hu2zg/?igsh=dTFvMjZrYWJ1Mmhx.
But what really inspired this introduction to the ultimate solution, about which I wrote to my church this week, is related to the quote from Henry Woodworth Longfellow, with which I started. But a quote ftom an entirely different level altogether:
THE WORD OF GOD
During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.
Hebrews 5:7 NIV
This as while others are ” a duh road”, whether at Carnival or Reggae Sunsplash or the various forms of ” Round Robin “, or on the other hand, engaging in many worthy social justice issues, like climate change and feeding the poor, a set of people need to be ” toiling upward in the night”, in unceasing prayer, to the Only One who can rescue Jamaica from schoolboy madness and Adult madness.
In this context then I wrote to my church about the reality that God changes hearts. And that only He can change hearts. Intent on ” Letting lose anarchy on the world “.
https://danielgodsurelywilldeliver.wordpress.com/
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