... and we all end up blind.

I was shocked to hear on the 7 a.m. news report the sound of President Obama announcing that the USA had killed Osama Bin Laden.  Shocked because this doesn't seem like any kind of justice I can relate to.  Shocked because there was celebration in the streets and people chanting "U.S.A."

What Bin Laden has been involved with is awful, there is no doubt of that, and some form of bringing to justice was necessary.  Assassination prevents that - now no-one will ever be able to ask what he did or why, details are lost forever.  It seems likely to me, whatever the claims about the lack of an equally charismatic successor, that this killing will prompt more, not less, violence.

Many other British Christian bloggers are voicing their concern over events as they are being reported, and are doing so far better than I can.

We listen.  We watch.  We try not to judge.  We pray for the incoming of God's Kingdom, we strain to glimpse the vision of a new creation, and in the meantime, in so far as we are able, we try to live at peace with all people (Romans 12/Hebrews 12) and to pray for, not about or against, our enemies (Matt 5/Luke 6).  Not easy... but no one said it would be.

Being the first, and so far only, ordained Baptist woman in pastoral charge of a Baptist Church in Scotland beings both privilege and responsibility.  Whether I like it or not, whether my peeps like it or not, one day, I and we will be part of Scottish Baptist history.

Most of the time that is something to which I, and we, can sit very lightly, getting on with life together, but now and again the responsibility aspect trumps the privilege.  I guess it has to really, since my ordination is to the wider church, not just to one fellowship.

It seems that a number of the Scottish Baptist women who are Associate Ministers have resigned in the last year, leaving the few who are hospital chaplains.  I don't know the reasons but it makes my role possibly ever more significant theologically and denominationally.

This week one of the students who preached for us during my sick leave meets the Board of Ministry as the final test of her call, we pray with and for her.  In a fortnight someone 'down south' faces her Min Rec ahead of coming to Scotland to start her training in September.  Rightly or wrongly, what I do, or don't do, say or don't say, will impact for good or ill how they fare in this beautiful and crazy Union.  I glimpse just a teeny bit of how it was for Edith Gates and Violet Hedger all those years back.

Please, if it's your thing, pray for F and A facing their boards over the next couple of weeks, and for all who find themselves thrust into pioneering or spotlighted roles.