On 16 December 2014, six gunmen affiliated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) conducted a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The militants entered the school and opened fire on school staff and children, killing 149 people including 132 schoolchildren, ranging between eight and eighteen years of age making it the world's fourth deadliest school massacre.
English writer and poet Adrian Plass reflects:
Yes, Christmas is coming, and the hash wind of terrorism has blown no good at all to over a hundred children and teachers in the faraway land of Pakistan. We know some people from Peshawar. Their hearts must be breaking. The people who instigated and planned this atrocity could have spent a very pleasant evening comparing notes with King Herod two thousand years ago.
Yes, you’re right. The only way to solve the problem. Crush it before it becomes even more of a threat. Destroy the children. Make sure they don’t grow up to become heralds of independence and goodwill and equal opportunities and life as it was always meant to be lived. Strew their bleeding bodies around so that the others will get the message. Show them that in the end, we are the ones who are going to win.’
Actually, they are not going to win. Herod failed to destroy Jesus, the heart of love and hope, and, despite hammering that unresisting body to a piece of wood, nor did those who conspired to bring about his destruction. Love and hope will always be resurrected, no matter how many times mankind tries to crucify them. There will always be another Mulala, standing bravely before the entire world, her only weapons a desire for peace, and a quiet determination that evil can snarl and sneer all it wants, but it will never see victory.
Crucially, there always was, always is, always will be Jesus, not just at Christmas time, but at every time and in every place where shadows threaten and sadness falls like a cloak, and failure seems inevitable. Over and over again, from now until the end of time, Jesus will be born.
On Christmas day the world will turn again towards its end
But Jesus will be born
A woman who has tried once more in vain to re-create the morning
Will find her spirit crushed at last by failures and defeats
Her grief will trail like tattered ribbons
Through apocalyptic streets
And Jesus will be born
A little child who cannot waste his tiny reservoir of moisture
On a thing as purely pointless as a tear
Will puzzle at the burning skies
Blank and empty as his mother’s eyes
And wish beyond the point of fear
That darkness would descend
And Jesus will be born
And in some cold, sad cell a man will dream of blessed ordinariness
A walk, a meal, a smile, a book, the chance to feel
A trusting hand in his
Small and soft and folded like a flower in the night
Devastating innocence that promises redemption and has never lied
But will not save him from the morning and the hour
When heavy boots come marching down the corridor outside
And Jesus will be born
And in a hollow church a hollow priest
Dry and dusty as some jeweled chalice locked away for safety and for ever
Will sit and sigh and gather oddments, scraps of truth
Remnants of an old, forgotten dream
Ideas and words like autumn leaves made brittle by a year of death
And by the scorching summer sun
And feel once more so glad, and oh, so very, very sad
That those who delicately brush his sprinkled fragments from their Sunday-best
Will never hear the distant, panic-stricken scream
And Jesus will be born
At the corner of the street the image of the living God
Will hug herself against the cold
And smoke a friendly cigarette
And be prepared to greet success with weary resignation
Feebly lit by one of yesterday’s recycled smiles
And struggle to forget what she was told
When someone was in charge and choices could be made
And there was hope
And Jesus will be born
Jesus will be born, yes he will
Though the night enfolds like a black shroud
And the liar’s lies drive us from our peace
And take us from our beds
And bring us to our knees
On the cold stone tiles of the kitchen floor
Jesus will be born, yes he will
Yes, though the skies crack
And the heavens sway
And the heat dies in the earth’s core
And the last stitch in the last ditch appears
When all is lost
A child’s hand will reach out from the manger
A wounded hand will catch our tears and hold them safe
For Jesus will be born for evermore on Christmas day.
Source: Adrian Plass HERE
