Desensitisation

What do we do when violence becomes everyday?

How should we react when the stabbing of a young boy is announced as straightforwardly as the weather forecast, or a holdup on the road?
When a criminal advocate is shot in front of his young son and other pupils at the entrance to a school?
When a mother of five doesn't know what to do one day as all of her sons are appearing in different criminal courts?
When armed robbers target a church on a Sunday as they think there'll be rich pickings?
When you've been in prison for twenty years, had your life turned on its head by Jesus but fear that your son is being drawn into the gangster world and don't know how you'll react if someone hurts him?

It's easy to say, "Trust in the Lord, ask Jesus what to do" but ....

I have learned that God can easily cut the Gordian knot of logical self interest, he can reconcile the seemingly disparate, but the lesson's taken a few years. What about those in the thick of it who haven't been granted that time? What do we say to them?  What do we do?

One church in Wellington is having a go.  Their Drugs and crime awareness film festival is planned for the beginning of December.  Films with storylines about the effects of drug abuse and gangsterism will be shown, young people and their parents will be encouraged to watch and stay for the discussion groups, reformed gangsters will share testimonies and insight. 

In South Africa many of the gangs are predominately black or coloured (not a pejorative term here).  The church organising the film festival has a mainly coloured congregation and will be able to speak to the poor areas of town but this is such a good opportunity to get congregations of al colours working together - all one in Christ Jesus. The issue affects everyone.  Some congregations can reach the people, others can help in the background.  What a wonderful witness it would be, and how powerful, if churches throughout Wellington united behind this attempt to break the cycle of crime and abuse and bring Jesus disruptively into the equation.