Dear Dad 4*

Dear Dad 4*

I’m wondering what you would have thought of the present world difficulties. We were born just after the second world war finished, and you found it so difficult and emotional to think and talk of that time, your time in the army overseas.**
I think you were torn between wanting to forget it and shield us from knowing its horrors, and an awareness that we (and all our generation, and future generations) needed to understand, comprehend something of its reality, something of the dangers humanity can slip into, and something of the experience of life being tough, of having to work hard in difficult, harsh, severe situations of living. Maybe you felt a fear that life would get so soft and easy and we (and others) would get complacent, thoughtless, selfish, maybe you felt we’d be less aware of the need of God and a hope for a future better life.

Anyway, this last year has certainly been a hard, experience for so many of all the generations that have come since that war. Maybe each generation has been lulled by increasing general prosperity, and also encouragement to live first for self, and an expectation that luxury is deserved and can be demanded.

You probably knew a bit about the flu pandemic that swept the world after the first world war.
Well this year we have had, and still have, a shocking pandemic. Though health care has improved so much since that previous time, and understanding of how to try to deal with such, there is no simple answer, and that in itself has been a shocking discovery I think.
Scientists have worked very hard to produce vaccines for this new virus that has escaped, and
(with the startling increase of world travel in the last 50 years) spread quickly right around the world. To some extent with all nations affected severely, there has been some opportunity for co-operation internationally, and some help reaching out to poorer countries, but as even the rich nations struggle as to how to deal with the situation, and the ‘rich’ countries are aware of the situation endangering greatly the industrial bases for employment they have built up over the years, all are struggling in similar ways.

The government have had to insist on ‘social distancing’: no hugs, no touching outside your immediate family or group. How much we are realising that hugs and a gentle, firm touch are needed by all for comfort and sense of caring. We have to try to use eyes and smiles – but that is limited by the need to wear face masks over nose and mouth when outside.

Many have had to close businesses, hopefully only temporarily, again to limit personal physical contacts. Even churches had to close for a while, and when they can open the congregation have to spread out, cleanse hands and seats etc, and only sing very quietly or silently, wearing masks, with very limited opportunities for sharing and mutual personal encouragement. With the modern technology, there can be ‘meetings’ over the internet where a group can all see each other and talk, share, pray. – and sing in volume from their own homes, to the glory of God!

And they can thus pray. In these days, unlike during the second world war, there is a nervousness about the public urging to prayer, and leadership acknowledging the need of supernatural help. Especially of acknowledging the possibility of calling out to whoever created the universe, of the one who came to Bethlehem as a child to teach, show his real miraculous power, and die, then rise to live again, indicating his power over even death, and ability to bestow forgiveness and eternal life. There is a reluctance to publicly call the nation to pray for grace to have mercy on a situation beyond human capability of fully dealing with. You will remember how the King and Prime Minister did so call on a number of occasions during the war, and unexpected helps and deliverances were experienced. We do need, maybe firstly those in churches, to cry for mercy and relief; and then encourage one and all to do so.

Maybe leaders feel they are expected to be confident of their abilities to an unrealistic extent. In this situation, I think even leaders in official opposition are aware that none of them are able to have perfect wisdom nor full control of events like this, and agree that they do not know of any substantially different alternatives ways to attempt ourselves to deal with the situation.

But there is also a nervousness of offending the different belief-systems that exist in mankind’s fund of religious ideas.

So, 50 years (actually 51 years now) on, still the same problems in this tired world, but the offer of God’s help to survive stands, and the increasingly welcome picture of his future re-make to hold on to, and make known.

Rhiannon

[IP: Write a letter, a poem, something or anything to or about someone who has gone. It might be a famous person, someone you know or someone fictional entirely]

*https://www.abctales.com/story/rhiannonw/dear-dad-%E2%80%A6-1
https://www.abctales.com/story/rhiannonw/dear-dad-%E2%80%A6-2
https://www.abctales.com/story/rhiannonw/dear-dad-%E2%80%A6-3

**https://www.abctales.com/story/rhiannonw/letter-war-%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%C2%A6
https://www.abctales.com/story/rhiannonw/letter-war-part-2
https://www.abctales.com/story/rhiannonw/troopship-july-1945