Mugabe and the braveheart Scots

The film. "Mugabe and the white African." It continues to be on my mind. A lot.

Remember I wrote that - " although they live those thousands of miles away, I don't want to let them down. I want to live here as they are living there. I'm involved in the same basic conflict."?

Well, maybe you don't remember! But it's there in my previous post.

'I'm involved in the same basic conflict.' I've been pondering that quite a bit. And am more persuaded of the truth of that than ever. There are some striking parallels between what's going on in Zimbabwe, and the conflict that we are involved in here in Scotland.

Zimbabwe, until quite recently, was known as the so-called 'bread-basket' of Africa. A country fertile and rich and producing the food which fed any number of peoples.

Isn't that, in a slightly different sense, what Scotland used to be? The 'bread-basket' of the world. The 'land of the book', feeding the world with the bread of life?

And isn't what's happened across the years in Scotland, pretty much what's been going on in the land of Zimbabwe? Hasn't our nation been hugely impoverished by the blind and greedy dictator which our godless and secular culture has grown to become?

And are not we, who love the Lord, and cherish the Scriptures as the very Word of God - are not we the 'farmers' who must likewise stand our ground and plead the cause of righteousness and truth?

Don't our children and grandchildren depend on us for this? Aren't there teeming multitudes today, now starved of God's Word, who know, deep down, that something's wrong, that this is not the way it's meant to be, but don't know what to do?

Aren't there countless thousands through our land who sense with some discomfort that there's something deeply troubling in the soft, permissive, 'so-correct' society in which they live?

But the thing is so pervasive and the pressures so insistent that they don't know what to do or where to start or how to change the course of things at all.

Aren't there countless multitudes who long that there'd be someone who would stand against this tyranny, the 'Mugabe of the mindset' which has foisted all its evil on our land?

And isn't that what just exactly we're called to be and to do in these days?

Isn't the conflict essentially the same? It simply takes a different form.

In Zimbabwe the dictator's a man. Here in our nation the thing which does the dictating is more of a mindset than anything else: a monster of the mind, a secular and self-affirming outlook or philosophy which has grown down through the years and now, it seems, entirely rules the roost.

It's the same basic conflict. The effects are in essence the same. A land and a people so hugely and sorely impoverished.

And looking for the few remaining 'farmers' to stand their ground, to stand against the currents of the present age and see our land restored to true prosperity in Christ.

This little bit from the pen of an early disciple of Jesus has impressed itself on my heart again.

"Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you.

For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have."

We're all in this together.