We are the very first generation of humans ever given the ability to see our beautiful world from outside itself.
We are the very first generation of humans ever given the ability to see our beautiful world from outside itself. You and I living in our homes in tranquillity and abundance might be able to easily dismiss the horrors regularly afflicted by humans upon other humans on this very tiny jewel – today in Ukraine and Africa, where thousands of Christians are being martyred- but the fact is that it is a tragedy of biblical proportions on what is a Garden of Eden bursting with life and goodness that has been given into our care. And even, maybe, it might just be the only game in town. Which is why I take so to heart such words of hope as in the Prophet Isaiah, in that 2000-year-old scroll found in a cave by the Dead Sea in 1947 just as Israel arose from the ashes of the Holocaust to became again a nation before the eyes of all nations:
‘This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:
In the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established
as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
and all nations will stream to it.
Many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
for the Law will go forth out of Zion,
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.*
He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
Come, descendants of Jacob,
let us walk in the light of the Lord.’
*did my part in this producing The Jerusalem Illustrated Bible.