1 December 2017

My reflection for the first Sunday of Advent is about PERSPECTIVE. Who we are, what we do, and who we become are so dependent on how we view and evaluate Reality.

Advent is traditionally about awaiting, and celebrating, the arrival of Jesus. In another perspective it is about what we believe and how we behave as followers of Jesus.

Yes. As we get into the “Holiday Season,” I am all for putting Christ back into Christmas. More importantly — when the message and spirit of Christ are absent in so much highly publicized contemporary “Christian” rhetoric and behavior — I would like to help put Christ back into Christianity. Too many religiously and politically influential people these days are re-writing the Gospel in their own image and likeness. When, for example, people like Franklin Graham and James Dobson proclaim that the current President of the United States was ordained by God. That is a very different perspective and terribly dysfunctional and deceptive.

And so this week end a poetic reflection on perspective.

The British poet, Brian Bilston, is a master at perspective.

Do we look at reality from top to bottom?

Or do we start at the bottom and go up?

Read his poem “Refugees” and please read to the end.

REFUGEES

They have no need of our help

So do not tell me

These haggard faces could belong to you or me

Should life have dealt a different hand

We need to see them for who they really are

Chancers and scroungers

Layabouts and loungers

With bombs up their sleeves

Cut-throats and thieves

They are not

Welcome here

We should make them

Go back to where they came from

They cannot

Share our food

Share our homes

Share our countries

Instead let us

Build a wall to keep them out

It is not okay to say

These are people just like us

A place should only belong to those who are born there

Do not be so stupid to think that

The world can be looked at another way

(now read from bottom to top)

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Perhaps we can use Advent 2017 to check our own perspectives and our attitudes based on them……

Jack

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