The most turbulent times since the Cold War?

We are living in troubling, turbulent times. Social unrest in the UK, the prolonged conflict in Ukraine, serious concerns over Chinese interference in the Far East and escalating violence associated with the war in Gaza are all reminders that we live in a volatile and dangerous world.

We shouldn’t forget the upcoming election in the United States either. I’ve read dire predictions of what could happen if Mr Trump is elected, and I’ve read equally grim warnings of what might ensue if he isn’t!

Is it any wonder then that the heads of the UK and US foreign intelligence services warned recently that the international world order is 'under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the Cold War.'

The Irish poet W B Yeats expressed it well: ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’. These evocative words were more than century ago but they could have been penned yesterday.

A familiar scene

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah could identify with our concerns. The international scene was equally threatening in his day with the Kingdom of Judah lurching from crisis to crisis as growing pressure from Assyria posed all kinds of challenges for its rulers.

It was at that turbulent time in his nation’s history that Isaiah had an encounter with God that convinced him that God is in control of history. In fact, Isaiah went so far as to compare Egypt and Assyria, the two superpowers of his day, to flies and bees who readily respond to a divine whistle!

Our part to play

Given all this then we need to pray, perhaps as we have never prayed before, trusting that we will be able to echo the words of Winston Churchill who told a gathering of mine owners in 1943, ‘I sometimes have a feeling of interference. I want to stress that. I have a feeling sometimes that some Guiding Hand has interfered’.

There are those who believe that this ‘Guiding Hand’ miraculously intervened when a gunman tried to kill Mr Trump earlier this year. I can’t comment on that, but it reminds me of another bullet that was found inside a hymnal in a Baptist Church in Texas in September 1999.

It had been fired by a lone gunman named Larry Gene Ashbrook who killed seven people before shooting himself. Not long after this awful event Police officer Chip Gillette was wandering around the church trying to make sense of the shooting. He found himself praying ‘God if there is anything left in here that I can take as proof that this really did happen, please show it to me’. And He did, because he discovered a bullet that had come to rest inside that hymnal where the words of Handel’s Messiah read, ‘King of Kings and Lord of Lords and He shall reign forever and ever’.

‘I began to cry’ Gillette recalled, ‘and to realise that Christ was telling me that He is Lord – before the shooting, during the shooting and forever more’.

Handel was echoing words found in the Book of Revelation of course, a text that dates from a time when the early church was experiencing the most horrendous persecution. The author John had been exiled to the small Greek island of Patmos because of his faith, but as he saw out his days, he met the risen Christ who placed His right hand on him and assured him that he need not be afraid.

We may be living in troubling turbulent times then, but we needn’t be afraid either because the Jesus who revealed Himself to John is still in charge of history. He always has been and always will be.