Hitchin Christian Centre

The season is hope - embrace it, share it...

At 4pm on May 27th, 1992, a long line of starving people were waiting in front of the only bakery in Sarajevo when they were blown to pieces when a bomb went off. Twenty two people died. Vedran Smailovic was just a hundred yards away when he saw it happen.

The next day hungry people lined up again to beg for bread - certain they would die if they didn't come and convinced they could die if they did. Then something happened. Vedran Smailovic arrived. He was dressed in a black suit and white tie - the same clothes he wore every night when he played in the local theatre until it was destroyed. He was carrying his cello and a chair.

Smailovic sat down in the square, surrounded by debris and the still raw stench of death and he began to play - the beautiful, mournful music of 'Adagio'. Every day, for 22 days (one day for each of the people who died) he did the same thing. The only hope he could offer in this tragedy was to be present - to be there - in the midst of the pain.

As we head towards the Christmas season we're reminded every day that there is a lot of pain in our world today. Some of it seems far off in distant war-torn lands but much of it is far closer to home. And there are no easy answers. How do we offer hope to people? It seems to me that the greatest hope we can offer is ourselves - that like Smailovic, we enter in to the suffering. Our mere presence, the fact that we are here for people in pain, that we sit with them, that we listen to them, that we cry with them - that we pray with them - is a sign of hope. Our presence declares - if even in a whisper - you are not alone.

And this is what it means to live like Jesus in the world because this is what Jesus does - this Christmas the incarnation reminds us that Jesus enters in to our broken world. Light in the darkness! He is Immanuel - God with us.

So let's remember today that we, the church, are supposed to be the community of hope. Wherever we go, we're bringers of hope. After all, as the prophet Isaiah reminds us...

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary and his understanding no-one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."

May that be our personal experience and may that be the gift we offer!

Matt Summerfield

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