Wars and Rumors

God looked at His newest creation and called it "very good." He had made Adam in His own image and after His likeness, and it was with a patriarch's blessing that -- after He created the lady Eve for a life-companion -- He gave them the planet Earth with the admonition to be fruitful and multiply. The animals were subject to him, and there was neither illness nor strife. The pair communicated daily with their Creator, happily partaking of the tree of Life that would ensure them all but equal status with the very angels of the Lord. Heaven on earth, indeed!

Then they started mankind's sorry descent into the hell of his own making, caused by direct disobedience of the benevolent God who had fashioned them from the clay of the lovely planet He had given them. Original sin banned them from God's presence, and a Seraphim guarded the gate east of Eden with a flaming sword. Their progeny of humankind have deteriorated by generation after generation, until there is scarcely a place they have not ruined by their depredations. Given a brain and the fruits of reason which had been established in a merciful reprieve over the eons of humankind, and the gift of a Savior, those select men and women -- keepers of the faith -- have not prevailed over the madmen who start wars and plant rumors of wars.

Now Russia, with whom we had coexisted in a status of cold war since WWWII, has invaded and burned, raped, pillaged and murdered by force of arms a neighboring country, Georgia. We have not been made aware any reason Moscow has given for this sudden departure from peace although it is fair to suppose that control of oil flow through the invaded territory plays an important part. So does the knowledge that the USA is building an anti-missile base in Poland, too near the site for the old USSR to feel comfortable about. There is imminent danger that the old wounds will open and we may, willy-nilly, be drawn into another world wide conflict. May God forbid that!

There is still violence in Israel-Palestine forces and people. There is a hot, shooting war in Afghanistan-Pakistan, and an unresolved fracas in Iraq. We are stretched beyond our limit to fight any further shooting wars, as Secretary Gates blandly told the Russians. We must use all the diplomacy of which we are capable. And it wouldn't do a bit of harm to pray now and again.

WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN??