In all things God works. I do not consider that we read the text as ‘God works’ in the sense of he is the author of all things, but he will work in and through all things. I a day’s time we leave again and will probably be off-line to some extent. Since coming home two events have occupied our thoughts: the Barcelona attack; and a very disturbing new video from Dayesh post-Barcelona. I have watched some of it, but it is too gruesome to watch it all. It would not feed faith to watch it.
All of us have to follow our convictions. My convictions are not someone else’s and I will only be held accountable for following what I believed. Have we made any contribution these past months to enabling God to be at work in and through all these events? Maybe our prayers made a small contribution to limiting the extent of the attack, but we will never know. We have certainly been impacted by the (imperfect) convivencia from the history, and have become convinced that part of the Pauline Gospel consists of the imagination being stirred to believe we can all live together. (This would be one of the reasons why Israel should of all places on the earth be a place for true convivencia – but in that little side sentence I have raised just a few questions!).
In Barcelona there was a 3 year old that was killed. The father said:
Necesito abrazar a un musulmán (I need to embrace a Muslim).
An Iman from outside Barcelona had attended the minute’s silence and was deeply distraught. In response, the father of Xavi embraced and consoled the Iman. He also said that he did not want the Muslim community to have fear of reprisals.
If we are making any contribution I will choose to watch and read these responses, rather than watch a Dayesh video, or read of revenge from a non-Muslim source. We have one life and finding where God is at work is so important.
Here is the link to the article and in the video form 1:00 on you can see the two embracing: