CP 160 The day the neighbourhood changed

A damp Wednesday afternoon in November in a suburb near you. An altercation occurs between some local boys. Why the fight? Who really knows. For this piece it doesn’t matter. What matters is that just a few moments later one boy is dead.

For his family everything is changed for the rest of their lives. Empty rooms, empty place at the table, empty hearts. Grief will be a constant in their lives. Heartache will not be imaginary. The pain is real and will never be forgotten. No 18th or 21st birthday celebrations. The relationships between all family members will be affected. One has to pray for recovery and forgiveness.

Nothing will ever be the same for those other boys either. Day by day on their way to school they will pass that spot. Further on they pass the entrance to the street where the dead boy lived. These boys too have mums and dads, brothers and sisters. What pain and suffering to bear. One has to pray for forgiveness of self and others. And for healing.

All these relationships, in both groups, including grandparents, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces, friends and neighbours, fellow school students, are scourged by this brief and fateful encounter. The tragic outcome has consequences beyond imagination..
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The neighbourhood has changed. It will never be home again with that innocence and security which is freedom.

(I cannot sit in judgement. Many years ago I was present at a fight at the Wagga Beach in which the loser was repeatedly kicked in the body and face while on the ground. The victor had training in martial arts, especially kick-boxing. The outcome could so easily have been the same. The brutality was halted only by the Council Health Inspector who happened to be in the area. I was there, with many others, and said and did nothing. I learnt much about personal ugliness and self-cowardice that day.)

The details of this story are unique to that event, but they are also echoes of the same theme, recurring again and again in human society and community. Sometimes things happen on a global scale. Other times it’s within a country or city. Sometimes deliberate malice is involved, sometimes it comes down to negligence. Sometimes there are accidents. And often enough, just silliness or stupidity without thought of consequence. But every time it happens, the neighbourhood, wherever or whatever it is, is irrevocably changed.

When Adam and Eve chose to grasp for equality with God, to act for self first, to enter into disobedience, and to reject accountability, their actions had consequences. The neighbourhood changed. Innocence was gone. Death entered in. God’s image became blurred so much that it was usually invisible to the naked eye. Mistrust and deceit became the norm. Relationships were always marred by self-interest. Every subsequent child of the first pair has been tarred by the same brush. Everybody somehow, someway repeats the behaviours. It is the neighbourhood in which we all live. Is there hope?

Enter Jesus… the Messiah who came to save sinners. He came to a sick and sorry world, an enslaved and desperate world, a violent and ugly world. But always a world and its people loved by God. His goal was restoration. His task was to open the way so the lost could come home. His call was simple… Follow me. His journey was not above sin and death but through sin and into death. It was the only way to break the satanic stronghold. He stayed the course and was never drawn off track. He is the pioneer of our salvation, who opened up the new and living way, as Hebrews tells us. He died and was buried.

AND ROSE AGAIN… AND THAT DAY THE NEIGHBOURHOOD WAS IRREVOCABLY CHANGED.

A Postscript… for example, by next morning one of the members of the Good Shepherd Church here had erected a white cross which became a focal point for a grieving neighbourhood… and again, something changed in the neighbourhood. I praise God for him and what he did.

Be blessed in Jesus the Christ.

Fred