In the wake of the recent religious turmoil in the guise of ethnic violence in Manipur, the United Christian Forum has called for justice and respect for all communities. A prayer campaign will also be launched for God’s guidance and intervention to establish peace in the state.
Mozambique, the former Portuguese colony, has been fighting the threat of jihadi terror in its northermost region of Cabo Delgado. But human rights activists in Africa point out that this is a deliberate and well-organized strategy to expel populations from their ancestral territories as the lands are rich with deposits of graphite that is used to make anodes for electric car batteries.
Religious tensions could potentially escalate in the Muslim-majority nation of Malaysia with the formation of a new coalition government that includes a fundamentalist political party. This new scenario brings to mind the past tussle over the use of the word “Allah,” which nonetheless ended beneficially for the Christians.
There is hope that the Silsilah Dialogue Movement will, by educating the youngest minds, eventually bring reason and peace to the conflicted island of Mindanao.
No matter how high a position we hold in this world, Christians must always be “servants,” at the service of humanity and God. It is only accepting our circumstances and our crosses that we can truly be good and faithful servants of Christ.
Christian morals seem to impose on us a series of “thou-shalt-nots,” but these should be seen as the training of the body “to subdue it,” as Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:24. To subdue is to master, and when one masters something, say a musical instrument, he is able to produce the most beautiful sounds. On the other hand, if he has not mastered it, he may just produce noise instead.
Despite the pain of the trials and suffering that come our way, we must derive from them the true joy that emerges from a faithful relationship with Christ, our Savior.