Chains of Injustice

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8

The theme of the Week of Christian Unity this year was ‘That we all may be free’. Using resources created by Christians in the Caribbean and provided by Christians Together in Britain and Ireland (https://ctbi.org.uk/week-of-prayer-for-christian-unity-2018/) we were encouraged to prayerfully consider different areas of injustice impacting on our communities and our world today: human trafficking, modern-day slavery, addiction to pornography and drugs, the debt crisis, challenges to family life, domestic abuse and violence.

The theme of injustice was picked up in Sunday@5 and is currently the area of prayer in the prayer space in the Trinity Chapel. Those visiting the prayer space are being asked to consider what areas of injustice most trouble them in the world today, to write these areas on a piece of paper, and to turn these pieces of paper into a paper chain, a chain of injustice. They are then encouraged to pray for God to break these chains of injustice, in our town, our country and our world. These paper chains of injustice will be broken on Ash Wednesday as we begin our Lenten journey.

Like Teresa of Avila, the 16th Century Carmelite nun, in her famous poem copied

below, those at the Sunday@5 service were encouraged to think what it really means to be part of the body of Christ as we work together against injustice. We need to all remember that God can turn our smallest and apparently insignificant efforts to combat injustice into something effective and beautiful.

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours.

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Teresa of Avila

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