Seeing Deeper…Looking Beyond – Friday 14th August

Kingdom Come

Romans 8.22

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

Luke 11.2

Jesus said to them,  “When you pray, say:  Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come…”

Reflection

I was born and grew up in Nigeria, and I only returned to this country at 17. Nigeria is a country of great contrast: significant mineral wealth and widespread poverty; wild joy and deep suffering; radical generosity and violent division. I am often eager for news from Nigeria, and a few years ago I turned to an article that caught my eye.

It described an event of great horror: a bus was ambushed along the main Lagos to Benin expressway, the passengers were robbed and the women raped, those that had nothing to give were forced to lie on the road face down, and the driver at gun point was commanded to drive the bus over them. A picture above the article showed the dreadful aftermath.

I was so utterly horrified at this event, I was nearly physically sick. I found myself on my knees, weeping, crying out to God, not simply against this appalling event, but the widespread presence of evil in our world, in all its guises. And, as so often for me, in moments of deep distress, I sat at my computer and wrote a poem…

Kingdom Come…

Bodies fleck the highway like bloodied autumn leaves
Among the once-owned handbags and the casual rolled-up sleeves
A nauseated ground retches, bucks and heaves
A horror-hell of silence stays when passing evil leaves

A seeping crimson pool joins the others in the ground
A spreading stain, a widening wail, a grave and groaning sound
Like paint upon a canvas, but only sprayed in red
From crushed and scattered body, from splintered, shattered head

Every life and thought and laughter, every dream and every plan
Every move to be a mother, every journey to a man
Every touch for waiting child, every fetus yet unborn
Raged and ripped and culled, cut and killed and torn

How can hate and horror flaunt its ways in heaven’s sight?
In the presence of the dawn, keep a blanket hold on night?
Pile a pall of shadow, masking fireworks of light?
Win so many battles when it should it have lost the fight?

All history, time and motion, every beggar, truant, king
Every beast on land and sea, every bird on spreading wing
Every man in iron fields, every whispering, wondering child
Every slate of ordered planet, every stretch of untamed wild

All the paths that lead to nowhere, all the plans that lie stillborn
All the wardrobes wreathed in luxury, lined up and left unworn
All the workers, all the widows, all the bedfellows of pain
Every pin-stick starving child, every farmer seeking rain

Every stretch of crumbled history, every hope of future light
Every martyr and messiah, every seer, every sight
Every story, every poem, every song from blistered lips
Every corrugated highway, every sway of ocean ships….

Waiting eager…waiting long…waiting trembling…waiting numb
Waiting for love’s long Master… waiting for Kingdom Come.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom Come…”

Frank Hinds
Planting and Pioneering Leader
(Church Wigan)