Continuing our short, impromptu series focused around the Zimbabwean elections I thought it might be timely to consider our own financial blessings, as a nation. While this clearly flies in the face of an economic downturn the blessings we experience are no less dramatic.
We are fickle creatures relying on a pretty finely tuned environment before we are satisfied. A few pounds more and we’d be content, a few less and misery closes in. I don’t want to belittle the genuine economic challenges many are facing but I do want to give some perspective to the overwhelming doom and gloom being peddled my the media.
In view of more thankful perspective
UK inflation – 2.5% (an item costing £1 today will cost approximately £1.3p in a year)
Zimbabwean inflation – 150,000% (Z$1 today Z$150,000 in a year)
Practically this means a number of things, when you are paid in Zimbabwe (if you are amongst the 1 in 5 that have a job) you need to spend your wages on that day or it becomes worthless. Items could cost 400 times more from one day to the next.
In order to buy anything Zimbabweans have to carry bags of cash – it’s not uncommon for people to have bundles of hundreds of millions of dollars packed into rucksacks when trying to buy the most simple commodities.
Friends of ours are eating rice, brought over the border from South Africa added to any vegetables they have managed to grow in their garden. They also, in what may be considered an irony, have to drinking the water from their swimming pool. The telephones have stopped working and there hasn’t been electricity for months. Occasionally a mobile phone will function, occasionally!!
For many life is comprised of rushing after the rumor of food, toilet paper or the vain hope of some other previously plentiful commodity.
Our taps work, we can buy bread for a few pence in a grotesquely overstocked supermarket and my mobile phone never stops ringing.
Even those in our society with ‘nothing’ have access to a world-class social services system that would render them multi-billionaires in Zimbabwe.
So while we batten down the hatches and seek to weather the economic storm please pray for our brothers and sisters who are having poverty redefined for them on a daily basis.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (Edmund Burke)
This is a reflection of a biblical truth
Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.
James 4 : 7
It is beyond credibility that any thinking person, let alone politician, genuinely believes that Robert Mugabe has not lost any democratic mandate to ‘govern’ Zimbabwe. He and his ruling Zanu-PF party have manipulated this election in a thousand ways and have still lost!!
Is the world really going to watch as he saunters away with another term as, self-styled dictator?
The popular image of Christ is as ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ – the Bible has a bit of a shock for you if this is your sole reference point for Jesus.
11I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. 12His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.”[a] He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:
KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.
Revelation 19 : 11-16
This image of a tattooed warrior is a stark contrast to the bearded hippie we are often sold by the media. This is the Jesus we will face and give an account of how we lived and what we did.
Justice will be done, and seen to be done – the wait is sometimes frustrating but the one who underwrites the promise is faithful.
My plea to good men, faced with a difficult decision regarding the current situation in Zimbabwe is – DO SOMETHING! the one fighting with you loves justice and is exceedingly powerful.
5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD ?
6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Isaiah 58 : 5-7
The Bible was written, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, by people often familiar with oppression. God is by no means indifferent to injustice and the plight of the oppressed.
He is angry about injustice and oppression and so should we be.
The current joke of an election in Zimbabwe should make your blood boil!!
I am privileged to count a number of Zimbabweans among my friends and knowing them to be such wonderful, generous people makes the crimes of the current Zimbabwean government all the more infuriating.
I guess the question for Christians is how to respond to this kind of obvious oppression?
1) We need to pray, with psalmist -
Arise, O LORD!
Deliver me, O my God!
Strike all my enemies on the jaw;
break the teeth of the wicked.
Psalm 3 : 7
Break the teeth in the mouths of the wicked – remove their power. We know a day is coming when, justice will flow like a river. Until that day we wait.
2) As well as praying and to inform our prayers and action we must take the lead form those living under the oppressive regime. We have an unfortunate tendency to become very cerebral in our response people actually experiencing these things are often far more pragmatic. What are the Christians in Zimbabwe saying and more importantly what is God saying to them?
The answer is both surprising and humbling – their reaction over the past few years has been that God has allowed all this that we see now and have seen for years now for his glory. The church has grown in faith and swelled numerically, lives are being changed, transformed in the midst of this serious oppression.
So we pray, believe and stand with all Zimbabweans asking that God will bring a peaceful resolution to this farce – and yes we get angry!! which should fuel our prayers.
