Conflagration looms in many places

Broadcast on 2CH Sydney, 31 Mar 2013

Happy Easter to all our listeners. Christ is risen!  As we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ today, spare a thought for those who do so amid persecution and terror.

Today, from the Middle East west across North Africa; north through Syria into Iraq and Iran; and east through to Afghanistan and Pakistan, churches face a trial unprecedented in our time.  The stage is set for regional ethnic and sectarian blood-letting, a multi-dimensional conflagration in which local Christian minorities will struggle to survive.

Meanwhile, a variety of anti-Christian ideological and totalitarian forces are flexing their muscles across Asia and making deep inroads into Africa and the West.

Christians need to practise the spiritual unity for which Jesus prayed 2000 years ago, take courage and express generosity across boundaries, and rise above the things that distract in order to live and give through self-sacrifice, just as Jesus did, as the world remembers this Easter weekend.

I’m Rod Benson for the NSW Council of Churches.