Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Official Report 743KB pdf

---

Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. The first item of business is, as always, time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Dr Alasdair Black, senior pastor at Stirling Baptist church.

Good afternoon, everyone. I have just got back from three months’ sabbatical in the west bank, so it is good to be able to come and share some of my reflections from my time there.

I first visited Nablus last year and encountered the Askar refugee camp. Despite the endless media coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I do not think that I was prepared for what I was to find. Amid the squalor and abject poverty and the walls and windows that were riddled with bullet holes, I was greeted by dozens of smiling and fun-filled children. Those children are not like other children; they live their lives against a background of checkpoints, military incursions and the indiscriminate demolition of their homes. As I looked at the children laughing and playing, I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of despair and hopelessness. What lay in their future?

However, just before the horror and desperation of the children’s plight became unbearable, my guide said, “Not that many tourists come here,”—that did not surprise me—“Do you want to see what I do the rest of the time?” He took us into the old city, to a set of rooms where he runs a circus, Assirk Assaghir, for the children of the refugee camps. There, along with a few others, he teaches hundreds of children circus skills such as juggling and clowning. There, in the face of military occupation, they make the children feel valued and special and they teach them to laugh again, despite the heartache.

My guide turned to us and said, “This is my resistance.” Immediately, my despair was replaced with hope, not because I believed that the circus would change the world or that teaching children to be clowns is the antidote to Israeli bullets and Islamic extremists, but because I knew that as long as people believe—maybe naively—that they can make a difference, the darkness will not overcome the light.

That is the hope of Christmas, which was brought by the birth of another Palestinian child who was born a refugee and subject to military oppression. As the apostle John says:

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

It is the belief, which some people might say is naive, that the child who was born in Bethlehem offers a light to the world and a hope in our despair that no political, military or social power can match. Because of his birth we can confront situations of despair and hopelessness with the promise of hope, peace and new possibility.

Let us pray together.

Lord, we pray for the plight of the Palestinian people. Lord, we pray that that land may know peace and wholeness. Lord, we pray for our nation. We pray that our land, at this time, would not be given up to despair and hopelessness but that we would know the reality of the light of Christ this Christmas.

Lord, we pray for ourselves. We pray for those situations when we feel overwhelmed, when we feel despair pressing in and overtaking us.

Lord, I pray that you would make us carriers of hope, peace and new possibilities this Christmas season. We ask this in your name.

Amen.