Listen, Little Creature!
Dr. Michel E. Abs
Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches
It takes just a few seconds and everything changes!
A few seconds are enough to turn buildings into ruins, stable families to homelessness, living people obliterated from the face of the earth, rich people into beggars, and flourishing cities into hidden remnants.
Seconds and everything turns into ashes!
The earthquake that hit the north of the Antiochian Levant reminded man, once again, how small, helpless, and worthless a creature he is without the protection of the Creator.
He who was arrogant, arbitrary, and oppressive, you find him transformed into a dependent creature, in need of the least necessities of life in order to go on living.
How petty you are, O creature armed with might, in front of the horror of nature created by the Creator, He whom you forget when you are at the peak of your power.
You forget that He, who suspended the earth on the waters, washed the feet of his disciples and gave Himself for you. In the height of your dominance, you forget.
There is no way to enter into the mechanisms of natural phenomena in order to explain and interpret what happened, on that fateful night, when the north of the Antiochian Levant was destroyed. All we saw were collapsed buildings and structures that had almost disappeared from the urban map.
What matters to us in all of this, are lessons and exemplars for human beings.
May they always remember that they are small creatures in front of the greatness of creation, this gift that they have worked hard to distort, harm and the image of which they have changed.
It may have had enough of the abuse inflicted on it by human beings.
It may have become overtaxed by excessive consumption by enterprises that practice environmental crime.
Perhaps it is overtired by the carelessness of small creatures who have compromised the order under which the Creator had created it.
Be that as it may, persistence in harming the environment, the gift of the Creator, has gone beyond acceptable limits.
At the peak of his recklessness, the little creature had forgotten how helpless he was in front of the Creator.
He has overlooked the fact that all that he had constructed for ages could vanish in a moment.
It is all worth for a pause on your behalf, you little creature!
Tell me, did the sight of the collapsed buildings hit you, knowing that within them there are people groaning and dying?
Has the sight of the stone that has crushed living souls failed to dumfound you?
Has the voice of screaming children begging to get out from under the rubble, not hurt you?
Has the sight of people lamenting over the loss of their loved ones not disturb your sleep?
It is one of the unseemly scenes that one can behold in the course of life.
These people have no fault other than having been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The inevitable question that confronts us, as we review the sight of collapsing buildings and rescue operations, is that how can a people who have endured the blockade for more than a decade, and who have lost the basic elements of survival, deal with a disaster of this magnitude?
The equipment as well as software necessary for rescue operations are not available, because someone has simply forgotten that he was but a small creature, like all other creatures, so he took revenge on people who found themselves devoid of all methods of dealing with disasters, in front of the horror of the earthquake and of its consequences.
It is a natural disaster in principle, but, by virtue of the imposed blockade, it is to be considered as a man- made disaster... made by human beings... the supposed brothers in humanity.
Depriving a people of the most basic necessities for survival for political reasons is not only a matter of tyranny rather it is to be classified as genocide.
My Christian faith does not accept that, nor do the human rights derived from it.
My Christ does not bully the weak, the helpless or the powerless.
My Christ healed the sick, fed the hungry and gave water to the thirsty.
My Christ did not accept the sword as a means of understanding between human beings.
My Christ did not accept hypocrisy and warned against hypocrites.
Your practices reveal your faith, which you have lost, as you have become lost groups looking for a lost identity and practicing hypocrisy as a cover for double standards.
My Christ, whom you have denied, and Whom you deny over and over again, every day, before and after the crowing of the cock, trying as well to remove His traces from your societies, He is still the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, and until the end of time, and He will forgive you the day you return to him, just as He forgave the prodigal son as he returned home after he had persisted in his carelessness and loss.
My Christ, on whose inspiration the blessed ecumenical movement operates, and your churches and human organizations are an essential part of it, blesses the steps of these churches and organizations who are trying to witness to his Incarnation and Message through their unyielding solidarity with the weak and the oppressed. Here they are, these blessed bodies, mobilizing their efforts from the first day of the earthquake-disaster in order to ease the pains of the homeless and heal the wounds of the injured, in a path of solidarity that is unique of its kind and that is several decades old.
My Christ, I see His Face in the utterance of a child stuck under the rubble, in the north of the Antiochian Levant, the Levant of Christ, as he says to you, “May God forgive you for what your hands have committed” and he says to the sisters and brothers of the Ecumenical family, “may the Incarnate Lord bless you as you bear witness to Him”!
As for myself, I ask you if I may, is the water of the world sufficient to wash away your hands from the blood of the children of the Eastern Antiochian Levant that you have trashed, from Palestine to Iraq, passing through Lebanon and Syria?
This I strongly do doubt!