Seeking to Understand

Today (30th June, 2017)… not unlike any other day the world turns. The news tells of pain, sorrow, hate and war. A world truly lost if we want to listen. I hear a quote on the radio:

“Seek first to understand, then to be understood” - Steven Covey.

Is it possible to understand the news of today?

Cardinal George Pell (high ranking Catholic in the Vatican) is charged with sex offences.

Germany makes same-sex marriage legal.

Trump bans people from 6 Muslim countries from entering USA.

People are being killed in India because they were found carrying beef, as the cow is more scared than a person’s life.

The Gulf crisis grows as Qatar is cut off by many countries and no-one seems to be able to understand each other.

More than 10,000 people were rescued last week from rickety boats that set off from Libya. At least 60 have drowned.

This year marks 16 years of unrelenting war in Afghanistan between the US backed government and the Taliban. Will Afghanistan ever find peace? 

A little closer to home today for me: A funeral for a 19 year old who was decapitated violently as a passenger while driving with his mate at 150km in a 60 zone. 1200 people weep over the loss of someone so young and vital at the Tops Conference Centre. How do we understand this loss? We drop off a car to a sweet girl who turns 16 tomorrow, and lost her dad 3 weeks ago. As she gets her dad’s car on her birthday, it is hard to understand the mixed emotions she will feel tomorrow. We meet with a corrupt Government system which has taken take 2 children from their mother, and pitted the family against each other. No-one one is listening to each other. We must sit and listen to the twisted lies that are made to serve an injustice for this family. We seek to understand but feel helpless. All this as I prepare for camp next week where we serve and love 37 children from abuse and dysfunctional families. Children who desperately need to be understood. 

And that was today, June 30th, 2017. It is a heavy day, not unlike many other days lately if you seek to “understand” what is going on in the world and in our own worlds. 

Is anyone really seeking to understand? It seems that mostly people want to speak and be understood, without ever really listening to anyone else. It seems that the right to speak and have the freedom to your own opinions and beliefs is the ONLY thing that matters. It’s a “radical individualism” that surges through society all over the world, from the top down, and I wonder where it will stop?

In some ways it has always been there, since the Garden of Eden. It is the flaw of humanity. I just wonder if God cries, wondering if humanity will ever get it? It doesn't work! And yet I feel we are becoming more and more vitriolic about our right to “radical Individualism” as each day goes by.  

In this time and always, God seeks to bring peace, self-sacrificing love, hope. He longs for us all to seek understanding, His understanding, which sees the world and the way we are to live in such an opposite way to the way we live today. As the last words God speaks in the Old Testament and the first words of the New testament attest …God longs to see the “hearts of the parents turn to their children and the hearts of the children to their parents” (Mal 4:6 / Luke 1:17). To turn our hearts toward each other is to try to understand before we demand to be understood. It is an  other-centred approach, a heart turned towards the good of others, rather than what I can get for myself. Imagine a world where we lived in this way!  Surely it would make the news of today better.  

Lord, I want to live my life in a way that “seeks first to understand, then to be understood.” I believe that your truth is the best place to start. Help me seek to understand that first and then seek to take the time to understand others that I may be able to bring hope, love and peace to a hurting world.