Wednesday 17 August 2011

UK Riots: God opened a wound

The steadfast love of the Lord


Jeremiah in the book of lamentations wrote these words after seeing Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians.
"The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases!  His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.  Great is your faithfulness.  "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." Lamentations 3:22-24
I must admit after seeing the devastation of London burning on Monday night... Tuesday morning I did not naturally think of these words.  But I found them as I read through the whole book.  You may be thinking “Why chose Lamentations to read?”  Well I felt like lamenting on Tuesaday morning!  London, the city I love had been hurt!  East Ham the community I live in and love had been attacked by it’s own youth!  Lamenting seemed like the only appropriate response!


The last thing I expected to find were words of hope.  I completely forgot they were in there.  This time they stuck in my mind like glue.  I couldn’t shake them.  How could Jeremiah hope in a time like that?  When everyone else would be cursing God, Jeremiah was hoping in Him?  Wow, what faith!!


You see Jeremiah knew God had a purpose for the suffering.  After all just a few verses later he wrote, “for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men.”  God wasn't revelling in the suffering caused, He allowed it for a reason.  To start the process of drawing them back to Himself.  You see how ever horrible that Babylonian attack was, being separated from God forever is far worse!  Eventually a remnant of His people came back, this lead the way for Jesus and salvation for the whole world!


We may not know why bad thing happen but in faith we can trust that God has a reason for all of it.  And we know we can trust Him because He sacrificed Himself for us on the cross.   We may not know why bad things happen but because of the cross we know it isn’t because God hates us, or has abandoned us.  He loves us, wants what is best for His people. He alone knows the best way to bring it about.


An opened wound!


After thinking all this through I came to my next question.  What is God wanting to say to His church to say through the present situation in London?


Over the past week many people have come up with reasons for the riots.  Poverty, unemployment, EMA cuts, materialism, racism, class distinctions, godlessness, lack of respect for authority, hopelessness, judgment to name just a few.  Most of these ‘causes’ have there grounding in facts in one way or another.  However, I can’t see how any one of any of them can cause the violence that has just swept across our nation.  The real answer I am sure is very complex and involves most of, if not all of these suggestions.  The fact remains that right now in the UK we have a youth sub-culture, that is living in a society that provides all the rights social ingredients for them to erupt into anarchy and violence.


As I prayed over what I was seeing on the news I felt God had momentarily removed His common grace from our society.  So we could see the real state of our country.  It was like He let a deep painful wound open up so we could look into it and see just how deep and dangerous it is!  We saw that the wound was deeper and more serious than we could possible imagine!  After all it wasn’t an outside enemy coming into attack us... It was our children!
I believe through the riots God was crying out for this lost generation!  And He wants the church to hear His call to reach them with the Gospel of Jesus!


Poverty, unemployment, EMA cuts, materialism, racism, class distinctions, godlessness, lack of respect for authority, hopelessness, judgment... These are just some of the issues facing our current generation.  As the Church we have the Gospel of Jesus, a message of hope and reconciliation that speaks into all these situations!


Please pray we will be able to relevantly share this amazing Gospel with this generation!


Hope


One last thing.  I think it is really important to point out that it wasn't all young people who got involved in this violence.  Here are three quick great things I saw on the same weeks as the riot.
  1. On the days surrounding the riots I was working with a team of young Christians to run Gospel fun days to reach children in East Ham.  There were 9 young volunteers who gave up three weeks of their summer to share Jesus.  As a result many children across London, heard about Jesus in a relevant way for the first time.  Hope!!
  2. At the same time other members of our church were involved in another summer scheme to work with Children for three whole weeks.  They ran three weeks, had over 190 children attend and was run by 25 amazing young leaders.  Hope!!
  3. On the same night that thousands of young people were rioting on the streets of London, 12,000 young people were praising Jesus at Soul Survivor.  And 191 young people gave their lives to Jesus!  Hope!!
Let’s treasure the young people we have in and on the fringes of our churches.  They are amazing!!  If we want to reach this generation it has to start with them!

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