The Wider View

I should really have gone to bed earlier but a programme on the BBC caught my eye and I sat down to watch. It was a documentary on the 11th September 2001 attack on American soil using transcripts, telephone conversations & some of the people who survived that day. The thing that struck me most was the recollections of security services and the issues surrounding why they had missed the bigger picture. Incidents as way back as 1993, attacks against embassies, ships etc. lax government policy, the failure of one secuity service to communicate with the other, the inability to imagine the worst, contributed to a most horiffic disaster.

I remember being at work that day in Manchester County Court, someone came back from lunch and reported that one of the twin towers had been hit by a plane. The whole office was stunned and each department within the court took it in turns to relay information back from the small tv in the lunch room. I remember the phones being jammed as we tried to contact a relative who lived within walking distance of the towers, of feeling relief once we knew she was safe. I remember feeling extremely shaken to my core and fretting that the world would never be the same again.

All that said, once people knew that those nearest and dearest to them were fine there was that inevitable tendency to switch off and forget that actually we live in a fairly dangerous world. Once back in our comfort zone we lose sight of the bigger picture and get bogged down in the detail of day to day living. I listen to Premier Christian radio quite a lot and find myself gobsmacked at the petty issues that divide Christians, at the vitriol Protestants express towards Catholics, at the (for want of a better word) sanctimonious pronouncements of Evangelicals, the naive attitudes of Pentecostals and I wonder whether we as members of the Christian community haven't missed the wood for the trees. Are we all so caught up in nit picking with others about our favourite issues, be it worship, music styles, women in leadership, acceptance of divorced couples re-marrying in church, sexuality etc. etc. that we actually fail to communicate or often understand the message of Jesus? Will there come a point when the Christian community will look back on history and say D'oh whilst slapping itself on the forehead for missing an important piece of information, for bickering within itself and possibly contibuting to a horrific disaster of more eternal significance than that 11th September 2001?
It is so easy to get caught up in the little things that can bog life down... losing socks in the washing machine, nappies, dinner money for school, bills, shopping, remembering to fill the car with petrol, keeping house, working, homework, family feuds etc. We are all on a journey through this world, as members of the Christian community we are God's hands and feet on this earth and it behooves us to remain '...united in the Spirit...' and bound '...together with peace.' Let us attempt to hold together and more importantly really touch people's lives with Jesus' message. The small things will work themselves out.