A New Year prayer from Bishop Harold – ‘freedom from the blame game’
From a time very close to the dawn of creation, human beings discovered both the sad pleasure and the damaging consequences of playing the blame game. Adam blames Eve for tempting him, and Eve blames the serpent. Now, there was an element of truth in their analysis. But the blame game, although it leaves us with adrenalin flowing and a warm sense of self–righteousness, never actually achieves anything else. It never moves things forward.
We stand on the cusp of this New Year with no final outcome yet of the Haass talks. We don’t know the detail of what was happening behind closed doors. And we need to be very careful not to apportion blame for the fact that they are not yet complete. The truth is that, in Northern Ireland, we have very often decided on peoples’ motives even before they begin to speak!
The start of 2014 would be greatly enhanced if we said very little by way of blame for our ‘situation’, except perhaps by looking into our own hearts and motives.
I am joining many others this year in a 365 day period of 24–7 prayer, and one of my prayers will be that God would give us a real freedom from the blame game. We know he can do it because, rather than blaming us (as he might well have done), he has taken all our sins and failings and removed than as far from us as the east is from the west.
A happy and peaceful New Year.
+Harold
Down & Dromore