War Cry 18 June 2022

Paraphrase a classic book? Consider it Donne

WAR CRY

18 June 2022 50p

Roaring back Dinosaurs are tyrannising humans again in Jurassic World Dominion

‘My OCD left me feeling isolated’

From the editor’s desk

What is The Salvation Army?

The Salvation Army is a Christian church and registered charity seeking to share the good news of Jesus and nurture committed followers of him. We also serve people without discrimination, care for creation and seek justice and reconciliation. We offer practical support and services in more than 700 centres throughout the UK. Go to salvationarmy.org.uk/find-a-church to find your nearest centre.

THE social distancing, shielding and imposed isolations introduced to help counter the spread of Covid-19 reminded many people that humans need meaningful contact and interaction with others.

As the saying goes, no man (or woman) is an island. And in this week’s War Cry, author Philip Yancey explains the circumstances in which those words were written by John Donne. The 17th-century clergyman was ill at a time when waves of people in London were dying of the plague, and John was fearful that he too had contracted the dreaded and deadly disease.

In the end, it transpired that Donne hadn’t, but as he waited to see whether he would die, he wrote about his feelings of misery and fear about the future. Philip Yancey returned to these writings as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, and he discovered that what helped John Donne could also help with the crisis being faced 400 years later.

‘He is honest,’ Philip says. ‘He comes to the conclusion that we’re all going to fear something, so it’s best to fear just one thing – and he decides that he is going to fear God, and by “fear” he really means “trust”.’

Many Christians have drawn strength from trusting in God, even in the darkest of times, including Sarah Clarkson, who speaks to us this week about living with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Sarah describes OCD as a ‘disease of fear’ but says that her Christian faith has helped her.

‘I’ve discovered, in the darkest points of my pain and isolation, that God is with me,’ she tells us. ‘He is at work in creation to create beauty out of difficulty, to give us compassion and to break into our suffering and to restore hope.’

Fear and isolation are never easy to deal ad the War C with. But God offers everyone his presence e re ry v ’ u and his hope to help in even the most difficult of times.

What is the War Cry? The Salvation Army first published a newspaper called the War Cry in London in December 1879, and we have continued to appear every week since then. Our name refers to our battle for people’s hearts and souls as we promote the positive impact of the Christian faith and The Salvation Army’s fight for greater social justice.

WAR CRY Issue No 7581

When yo

Email: warcry@salvationarmy.org.uk The Salvation Army United Kingdom and Ireland Territory 101 Newington Causeway London SE1 6BN

CONTENTS

Tel: 0845 634 0101 Subscriptions: 01933 445445 (option 1, option 1) or email: subscriptions@satcol.org Founder: William Booth General: Brian Peddle Territorial Commander: Commissioner Anthony Cotterill Editor-in-Chief: Major Mal Davies

FEATURES

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Write on Day encourages creativity

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We still love island metaphor Why a 17th-century phrase still applies today

INFO

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‘I was confused, hurt and angry’ Living with OCD

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Dino saw us A return to Jurassic World

Published weekly by The Salvation Army © The Salvation Army United Kingdom and Ireland Territory ISSN 0043-0226 The Salvation Army Trust is a registered charity. The charity number in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is 214779, in Scotland SC009359 and in the Republic of Ireland CHY6399.

Printed by CKN Print, Northampton, on sustainably sourced paper

Your local Salvation Army centre

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Editor: Andrew Stone, Major Deputy Editor: Philip Halcrow Production Editor: Ivan Radford Assistant Editor: Sarah Olowofoyeku Staff Writer: Emily Bright Staff Writer: Claire Brine Editorial Assistant: Linda McTurk Graphic Designer: Rodney Kingston Graphic Designer: Mark Knight

REGULARS 4

War Cry World

12 Team Talk 13 Now, There’s a Thought!

14 Puzzles 15 War Cry Kitchen Front-page picture: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS/AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT

JAW-DROPPING

DANGER

Owen Grady flees a dinosaur specifically bred and trained to kill

Jurassic Park film franchise returns in bid to get cinemagoers’ hearts racing Film feature by Emily Bright

CUP of water ripples on the SUV’s dashboard as a thudding sound echoes through the dark valley. A goat chained up for a dinosaur’s dinner disappears. Then the blood-curdling roar of a T. Rex is heard as it breaks through broken electric fencing.

Welcome to Jurassic Park, and the original 1993 film.

Now, almost 30 years since Jurassic Park was released, audiences are getting their teeth stuck into the sixth – and, the film-makers say, concluding – featurelength instalment of the film franchise, Jurassic World Dominion, which is on general release in cinemas.

Dinosaurs roam the earth freely, and humans are coexisting with the dangerous reptiles that have been brought back from extinction. The illegal trafficking of dinosaurs is a booming trade, and dinosaur protection activist Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is relentless in her work to rescue them.

She and her husband Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), a dinosaur behaviour expert, are hiding out in a cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains and raising a teenage girl called Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), a clone they rescued from a dinosaur containment facility during the last film, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The couple are concerned that Maisie will be tracked down by mercenaries so that her DNA can be exploited for science.

One day, Maisie meets a young dinosaur clone called Beta. But, just as she begins to develop a bond with the clone, the family face a formidable threat to their future.

Elsewhere, palaeobotanist Dr Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is invited to visit a biotech firm called Biosyn, which has a monopoly on researching dinosaurs for

UNIVERSAL STUDIOS/AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT

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Dr Ellie Sattler and Dr Alan Grant are charmed by a baby nasutoceratops medical and pharmaceutical purposes.

Her former colleague Dr Alan Grant (Sam Neill), tags along for the visit, where they reunite with fellow Jurassic Park veteran Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). But, while Biosyn appears to be a palaeontologist’s paradise, the reality is more complex.

As the film unfolds, characters must grapple with the pain of their past and the fallout from years of dinosaur DNA experimentation by scientists. All the while, deadly creatures lurk round every corner.

While bringing back dinosaurs from extinction is fiction, facing the consequences of choices we or others have made is a stark reality. Sometimes, situations can

Deadly creatures lurk round every corner

seem hopeless and can leave people feeling that they are unable to carry on.

In such times, many turn to their faith in God to sustain them, taking heart from his words of hope to humankind.

In the Bible, God assures a group of troubled people: ‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland’ (Isaiah 43:18 and 19 New International Version).

Those words were and are a poetic assurance that, regardless of our circumstances, God can help us through.

He can give us the wisdom, strength and hope we need to claw back our futures.

If we let him into our lives, we will find a way forward.

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BBC/TRUE VISION EAST/JERMAINE BLAKE

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WAR CRY Stacey Dooley talks with Mina Smallman in Canterbury Cathedral

Prayer comforts mother of murdered sisters IN a BBC documentary, a retired Anglican priest whose two daughters were murdered spoke to presenter Stacey Dooley about how faith is helping her through her grief.

In Two Daughters – available on BBC iPlayer – Mina Smallman told how, in 2020, her daughters Bibaa and Nicole were stabbed to death in a park in north London by a man who believed he had drawn up a contract with a devil.

When Stacey asked her about coping with loss, Mina revealed that her Christian faith had sustained her through the darkest days.

She explained: ‘My friend had prayed for me, and when [the police] said [that the killer] had made a pact with a demon, the devil, suddenly, I just felt this peace descend on

me. I just felt full of the Holy Spirit. I thought: “This is it. This is my territory. I understand this. I’m the light, he’s the darkness.” And I felt: “I can do this.”’

Later in the programme, when Stacey joined Mina and her husband, Chris, in Canterbury Cathedral to pray for people who suffer violence, Mina told Stacey that prayer continues to bring her comfort.

Without faith, Mina said, ‘I think I would be a very angry, bitter and twisted female… Finding my faith has saved me on numerous occasions. And at times like this, you need it…

You have to dig deep when the bad times come.’

The documentary also showed Mina talking with a journalist on the subject of forgiveness, explaining that she had forgiven her daughters’ killer.

‘When we hold hatred for someone, it’s not only them who are held captive, it’s you,’ she said.

Scientist uses R rate on growth of churches A SCIENTIST has used a technique that has become familiar during the Covid-19 pandemic to track how church denominations are growing.

Premier Christian News reported that Dr John Hayward, a Christian and a visiting fellow at the University of South Wales, looked at church growth using the ‘R rate’ of reproduction or contagion.

He said he chose the method because ‘churches often grow through personal contact’, explaining that if someone accepts an invitation to church and becomes a Christian, faith has been spread by word of mouth and ‘word of mouth operates in the same way as a disease’.

His findings showed that 3 of the 13 denominations had an R rate of more than 1, which meant they were growing. The others had an R rate of below 1, which meant that the number of churchgoers was reducing.

Sarah Yardley, the mission lead for a large Christian festival, commented that the churches where congregations were growing had managed to combine ‘reverence and holiness’ with ‘vibrancy’.

She said: ‘I think that that vibrancy, that warmth, that sense of slightly less formal, while still retaining the holiness of God, is what the people around me seem to be searching and hungry for.’

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COVENTRY City Football Club is featuring the city cathedral’s stained-glass windows pattern on its new home kit to celebrate the heritage of the club.

The pattern appears within two tramlines running down the players’ shirts, which symbolise the tramways that ran in Coventry until they were destroyed in the Blitz of 1940.

The stained-glass design is repeated inside the neck of the shirt, along with the words ‘In our Coventry homes’.

The goalkeeper shirt highlights an extended section of Coventry Cathedral’s stained-glass windows on its short sleeves.

The new kit emerged as Coventry Cathedral marked the 60th anniversary of the consecration of its new site last month. The original cathedral building was bombed during the Second World War.

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SKY News presenter Gillian Joseph is joining a Salvation Army fundraising challenge that encourages people to scale the equivalent of the tallest buildings in 30 countries within 30 days.

The 30 Tallest Buildings Challenge can be completed in many ways throughout June, such as by covering the distance on gym machines, climbing the stairs or walking as part of a daily routine.

Gillian said: ‘The 30 Tallest Buildings Challenge is an amazing opportunity to get fit and raise funds for The Salvation Army in a completely unique way.’

The money will go to Salvation Army projects that care for people facing crises.

Do you have a story to share? a warcry@salvationarmy.org.uk @TheWarCryUK TheWarCryUK

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All write National Writing Day encourages people to put pen to paper Feature by Claire Brine

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ENS and paper at the ready: it’s National Writing Day next Thursday (23 June). The aim of the annual celebration, which is backed by the National Literacy Trust, is to encourage people of all ages and abilities to write for fun, creativity and self-expression.

On the National Literacy Trust website, visitors can find links to various writing activities that have been designed to help schoolchildren improve their skills in areas such as writing poetry, creating scripts for comics and composing letters. The trust also highlights the pleasure that can be found in writing from an early age, citing research which shows that two in five children turn to writing to help their mental wellbeing.

Speaking to the Royal Society of Literature to mark the first National Writing Day in 2017, author Michael Rosen attempted to explain why writing matters. It has ‘the function of storing up stuff, partly or perhaps mostly because we can’t store it in our heads: we can’t know everything,’ he said. ‘We use writing to compensate for our own deficiencies.

I like that. Writing helps us.’

Writing not only enables us to record and remember important things, but it also helps us to express and understand ourselves better. Sometimes, when we read what others have written, we find comfort, strength, peace or inspiration in their words.

The Bible is a good example of how people’s writings have the power to be life-changing. It tells the story of a God who loved humankind so deeply that he wanted to save it from the eternal consequences of its wrongdoing.

One Bible writer, John, summed up the story in the words: ‘God showed his love for us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through him’ (1 John 4:9 Good News Bible).

John wanted to get the message across that, because God’s Son, Jesus, died on a cross, all our character flaws could be forgiven. And because Jesus rose to life two days later, the hope of eternal life in Heaven is possible for anyone who believes in him.

Written in history, it’s a story still worth telling.

Words can be life-changing

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He was really saying something In the early 17th-century, the English poet John Donne wrote a book of reflections whose words have become part of the language, but whose vocabulary, PHILIP YANCEY found, could scare off some modern readers.

Believing the book had a message that was right for the 21st century, the US author set about writing a paraphrase Interview by Philip Halcrow

I

T may have given the English language the everyday saying ‘No man is an island’, but Philip Yancey was discovering that the chances of his friends sharing his enthusiasm for the book were remote.

Fifty years ago, while searching for helpful words on the experience of suffering, the young American developed an admiration for a 17th-century work

by English writer and priest John Donne.

Philip hoped that his acquaintances would also appreciate Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, so he bought them copies.

They found it inaccessible.

‘I would ask whether they had read it,’ says Philip. ‘They would look at me a little guiltily and say, “I tried. I got a few pages in, but it’s tough going.” The language was a barrier to them.’

Around that time, publisher Ken Taylor completed a modern-language paraphrase of the Scriptures, The Living Bible, to help people who were confused by the King James Bible. Philip, as a young writer, had an idea.

‘I thought I could do for John Donne’s Devotions what Ken Taylor did for the King James Bible, which was published only a few years before John Donne’s book,’ he says.

He sent publishers some sample

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Philip Yancey chapters, but they rejected them. So his work lay in a drawer until world events a couple of years ago sent Philip back to it.

‘John Donne got sick in the late fall of 1623,’ says Philip. ‘At the time, he was very famous. He was the dean of London’s biggest church, St Paul’s Cathedral. But it

was also a time of crisis. A third of London had died in the waves of plague and a third had abandoned the city, trying to find villages that might be safer. Yet St Paul’s was still packed with people who wanted to find out what was going on.

Some wondered if God was trying to tell

PHILIP HALCROW

A sculpture of John Donne outside St Paul’s Cathedral, where the poet was once dean them something. People were making pronouncements. There were conspiracy theories, much like today.’

Even though it would turn out that Donne did not have plague, his illness confined him to his bed, where he wrote down his reflections on the times and his own experiences.

‘I think some of the doctors discouraged him from using his energy to write, but he ignored them,’ says Philip. ‘The people around him knew that the book would be a big seller, so they rushed it out. The publication came

so quickly after his illness that I don’t think Donne spent much time editing it. But it was a message that the country needed.’

When Covid-19 broke out, Philip felt that Donne’s book could speak to a world that was suffering in the pandemic.

So he recommenced his paraphrase.

Wanting to bridge the gulf that might exist between 21st-century readers and the 17th-century prose, Philip was ‘ruthless’.

He simplified the language. ‘I counted one of Donne’s sentences that had 234 words – and we’re just not used to that today,’ he says.

It was a message that the country needed

The pigeons also had to go.

‘One of the barriers to the original book is that the science is so dated,’ Philip explains. ‘In Donne’s day, stateof-the-art treatment involved bleeding, cupping, applying leeches and applying pigeons to draw away the poison in your body. I didn’t see the point in including that.

‘If you take out the science, you are left with the person who is going through a hard time and asking the existential questions that we still ask today: What can I learn from this? Can anything good come from this? Is God

Turn to page 8 f

18 June 2022 • WAR CRY • 7

From page 7 punishing me? What happens after death?

Can God forgive what I’ve done?’

In his Devotions – titled in the new paraphrase A Companion in Crisis – Donne describes how his illness makes him miserable and fearful.

‘I study the physician with the same diligence as he studies the disease,’ he writes. ‘I notice that he’s scared, which scares me all the more.’

But Philip says that a change takes place in Donne during the two months of his illness – and the transformation is summed up in a ‘beautiful metaphor’ and a passage that people still love to quote.

‘Donne had been so self-absorbed with his illness, as tends to happen. He would hear the church funeral bell ringing and would wonder whether he was next. Was the bell announcing his illness? Had the doctors hidden from him how serious it was?

‘Then he realised that he hadn’t really felt compassion for the people around him who the bell was tolling for. He knew he needed to care.

‘He felt helpless, because he couldn’t stand in the pulpit and offer words of comfort and he couldn’t pay pastoral visits, but he realised that he could bear people up in prayer and should start caring about others.’

So Donne wrote – in the new paraphrase – ‘No one is an island, isolated and self-contained. If a chunk of earth

be washed away by the sea, Europe is diminished – as much as if it were a promonotory, or a friend’s manor, or my own. Anyone’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in all humanity.’

Philip says: ‘This is something the apostle Paul makes clear in the Bible when he compares Christians to a body and says that what is important is not a person’s status but the way everyone is joined up. If any part suffers, the whole suffers.’

Seventeenth-century Donne had questions and concerns that are still understandable. Philip suggests that the poet was perhaps wondering whether God was punishing him for past wrongdoing or was simply trying to tell him something.

‘Philosophers through the centuries have asked the question: If God is good, if God is powerful, why do bad things happen to good people? It’s a universal question, regardless of your faith.

‘Donne’s book has lasted so long because he is honest. He toys with various explanations, but he comes to the conclusion that we’re all going to fear something, so it’s best to fear just one thing – and he decides that he is going to fear God, and by “fear” he really means “trust”. He says that if he does that, then he doesn’t need to fear what the doctors are talking about in the hallway or all the little things, because he has solved the big thing. If you believe that God is trustworthy, then you can cope in a

l A Companion in Crisis is published

by Darton, Longman and Todd

IANDAGNALL COMPUTING/ALAMY

He realised he should start caring about others

different way.’

Philip believes that Donne’s words ring true.

‘We still live on a planet where God’s will is clearly not being done “on earth as it is in Heaven”. The world doesn’t please God any more than it pleases us.

‘But Christians believe that God plans to restore the planet – we’re just not there yet. We have to trust that God, who took his Son’s death and turned it into the salvation of the world, can also take the bad things that are happening and turn them into something that we can be helped by.

‘The Bible describes God as “the God of all comfort”, and Christians are called to represent that and to be there for people in a visible way. John Donne’s illness was so painful because he wanted to be in the pulpit, bringing comfort to a confused city.

Instead, he was sick.

‘As it turned out, though, he is still bringing comfort 400 years later through his writings.’

A view of London in the early 17th century, showing the old St Paul’s Cathedral, which Donne would have known, across the Thames 8 • WAR CRY • 18 June 2022

Facing a disorder of fear SARAH CLARKSON talks about living with obsessive-compulsive disorder and tells how reading The Lord of the Rings helped her forge a new outlook on her future Interview by Emily Bright

I

NTRUSIVE and disturbing thoughts raced through Sarah Clarkson’s mind one night at her home in Texas.

The nine-year-old’s heart hammered in her chest. She was left feeling fearful, contaminated and helpless. It was a warning that her mind was on the verge of breaking.

Eight years later, her mental health worsened and she received an official diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

‘OCD manifests in many forms,’ Sarah explains. ‘My kind of OCD, which emerged when I was 17, primarily has had to do with the presence of unwanted and disturbing images, usually of a violent or sexual nature. Throughout my childhood, there were warning shots from my mind – periods of terrible dreams.

‘I couldn’t track the source. But it’s very common for OCD or mental illness to manifest in teenage years. For me, one day I had a normal mind and the next, I was seeing dreadful images, and I just had no idea what to do with them.’

Sarah felt disconnected from the people around her.

She remembers that after the onset of her OCD, she didn’t know how to tell anyone for several weeks, because of the difficulties of explaining her thoughts.

‘Mental illness in general is quite isolating, because you have this whole darkness inside of you that is almost impossible to describe,’ she says. ‘Even if you could describe it, how are you going to tell the people you love the most that you bury this evil inside of you, while trusting that someone won’t attribute it to you? It was very isolating. But

I was seeing dreadful images and I had no idea what to do

Sarah Clarkson

Turn to page 10 f

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From page 9 I was grateful for my family, who I told and who did support me.’

Despite their wholehearted support, OCD continued to have a huge effect on Sarah’s life.

‘OCD is a disease of fear, so whatever you’re afraid of, whatever is precious to you, it will attack,’ she explains. ‘These days it includes a terrible fear for my children and of the dreadful things that could happen to them.’

The fear has affected her friendships

and other relationships as well as her hopes for the future. She says: ‘Mental illnesses and anxiety are always intertwined, so leaving places that I knew, leaving structure and leaving home just meant an overwhelming tidal wave of increased thoughts and fear.’

In her 20s, Sarah had plans to leave her family home in Colorado and embrace her independence, but when she did so she was plunged into a series of panic attacks and struggled to

I was confused, hurt and angry

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sleep, with intrusive thoughts continuing to plague her mind.

She later reached a turning point with her OCD when she realised that she was not the cause of it. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t have guilt, but these thoughts are not my fault,’ she says.

‘In these situations, it’s such a help to have the input of medicine, doctors and psychologists. There are treatments like cognitive behavioural therapy, where you learn that, although the thought is in your mind, you don’t have to engage with it or call it true. With OCD, I increasingly learnt to reject so much of what I saw.’

From childhood, Sarah found comfort in her Christian faith, but she says that her OCD diagnosis ‘caused a real disconnect’ with her faith. ‘I’d grown up believing that God protected us and loved us and cared for us, and suddenly my mind was filled with evil.

‘It made me question what it means to be loved by God, and what it means for him to be powerful. Is he real? Can I trust him? I was just so confused, hurt and angry at God. I put away my Bible and didn’t want to face God for a while.’

In the early days of her OCD, Sarah drew strength from an unexpected source: the work of author and Christian JRR Tolkien.

‘In that period, I was reading The Lord of the Rings,’ she says. ‘Every person in the story chose for themselves whether they would be an agent of goodness, light and beauty at their own cost, or would join the darkness. There’s a real sense in which evil isn’t accomplished just by choosing to do something awful, it can also be accomplished by giving into despair.

‘There’s a passage where Sam the Hobbit is in the midst of Mordor. He’s very near despair, but he looks up and he sees a star above him. He realises in that moment that the darkness is a small and passing thing, and the light is what will endure. I had this clear sense that I had known God in his beauty and goodness, even if it felt absent to me. That empowered me to believe in goodness, and to reach towards hope.’

In the years that followed, Sarah returned to reading the Bible and held fast to her faith. When she was 30, she decided to move to the UK and embarked on a theology degree course at Oxford University, during which she explored the Book of Job. The Old Testament book tells the story of a man who experiences every conceivable kind of suffering – including the death of his children, the destruction of his livelihood and poor health. Job’s unhelpful friends suggest that his suffering is a punishment from God because of things he has done wrong. His wife tells him to curse God. Yet Job maintains that

he is a good man who doesn’t deserve his suffering, and vows that he will remain faithful to God, even during the darkest time of his life.

‘I love Job’s tenacity and stubborn faithfulness in not cursing God and not saying he is responsible for his own suffering,’ says Sarah.

‘He demands that God appear, and God says: “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. I can’t answer you in the way that you want, but I will show you my beauty.” He sets creation before Job and asks him to trust without explanation.’

Her study of Job confirmed her sense that God communicates his goodness through people’s encounters with beauty.

She explains how her perspective on

beauty and faith has helped her through life in her book, This Beautiful Truth.

‘Beauty is the form of God’s goodness and truth,’ Sarah tells me. ‘The radical love we can show each other is a form of beauty. I find beauty in encountering a passage of literature or Celtic music, the song of birds, springtime daffodils or the faithful love of my mum in my darkest times.’

She acknowledges the flaws of the world and admits that faith doesn’t make suffering disappear. Instead, she believes, ‘God is deeply present to us in our times of struggle, transforming our suffering by his presence’.

‘When we come to faith, everything does not suddenly become calm sailing,’

Beauty is God’s goodness and truth

she adds. ‘We still need to wrestle with suffering. But, as Christians, we do that with God by our side, and we can encounter his goodness and healing. I’ve discovered, in the darkest points of my pain and isolation, that God is with me.

‘He is at work in creation to create beauty out of difficulty, to give us compassion and to break into our suffering and to restore hope. He’s making our lives whole and beautiful.’ l This Beautiful Truth: How God’s Goodness Breaks into Our Darkness is published

by Baker Books

18 June 2022 • WAR CRY • 11

Prayerlink THE War Cry invites readers to send in requests for prayer, including the first names of individuals and details of their ­circumstances, for publication.

Send your Prayerlink requests to warcry@salvationarmy.org. uk or to War Cry, 101 Newington Causeway, Lon­don SE1 6BN. Mark your correspondence ‘Confidential’.

j

Becoming a Christian

There is no set formula to becoming a Christian, but many people have found saying this prayer to be a helpful first step to a relationship with God

Lord Jesus Christ, I am truly sorry for the things I have done wrong in my life. Please forgive me. I now turn from everything that I know is wrong.

Thank you that you died on the cross for me so that I could be forgiven and set free.

Thank you that you offer me forgiveness and the gift of your Holy Spirit.

talk ‘ ’ Team talk TEAM TALK Peace talks

Claire Brine gives her take on a story catching the attention of War Cry reporters

THE Archbishop of Canterbury posed a question in The Guardian last week – and I struggled to answer it. ‘Is a world without violent conflict really possible?’ he asked.

The Most Rev Justin Welby began by reflecting on the Second World War, then turned to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

‘There’s no shortage of … conflict and turmoil in this country and around the world,’ he said. ‘Why do we keep making the same mistakes?’

After commenting on the suffering and destruction caused by violent conflict, the archbishop explored the value of peace. He pointed out that peace is not a ‘shared conformist identity’, but ‘the ability to deal with discord by non-violent means’.

Often, he said, ‘we think hard about how to fight, not often about how to build alternatives to fighting… Our challenge is to put in place the infrastructures of reconciliation and the architecture of peacebuilding that enable disagreement to happen robustly, but not violently.’

Pursuing peace while facing disagreement doesn’t sound easy. In any conflict, ‘reconciliation will always be complicated and flawed,’ said the archbishop, ‘because we ourselves are complicated and flawed’.

Reconciliation is ‘often risky and always costly’.

But – I wondered – if we don’t build peace, what then? What kind of world are we left with? And do I really want to find out?

Instead of plunging Guardian readers into despair, the archbishop urged them to think bigger – and better. There are things we can do to build peace.

Resigning ourselves to the belief that war is an inevitable part of life isn’t going to help us put a stop to it.

He explained: ‘Peace requires a shift in our moral imagination, a transformation of our understanding of what could be possible. That’s how we break out of repeating cycles of violence… We have to be able to imagine a different world before it becomes reality.’

It’s a good point. Humankind is unlikely to move away from violent conflict unless it begins to understand the value of the alternative. We need to believe in the benefits of peace in order to prompt us to seek it.

If we don’t, there’s no question about it: we all lose.

If we don’t build peace, what then?

Please come into my life by your Holy Spirit to be with me for ever.

Thank you, Lord Jesus.

Amen

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War Cry 101 Newington Causeway London SE1 6BN

Basic reading about Christianity Information about The Salvation Army

Looking for help?

Contact details of a Salvation Army minister Name Address Extract from Why Jesus? by Nicky Gumbel published by Alpha International, 2011. Used by kind permission of Alpha International

Or email your details and request to warcry@salvationarmy.org.uk 12 • WAR CRY • 18 June 2022

Ty Burrell played dad Phil Dunphy in ‘Modern Family’

Q

QUICK QUIZ 1

2

Who played the title role in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?

Who is the only woman to win album of the year three times at the Grammy awards?

A 3

4

5

6

Which Shakespeare play has the alternative title What You Will?

What is the surface area of a cube that has an edge of 5cm?

Which city in Scotland has the nickname Auld Reekie?

Last week, Wales qualified for the Fifa World Cup for the first time since which year?

ANSWERS

NOW, THERE’S A THOUGHT!

by Omolara Olusola

Why Phil is my favourite TV father F

OR those of us who use social media, it is almost that time again when arguments about parental figures break out.

Inevitably, on Father’s Day someone will post a picture of their mother or a maternal figure and will wish them a happy Father’s Day. Another person will take umbrage and say that we should let fathers have their day. Unfortunately, discussions are likely to turn heated.

Elsewhere on the internet there will be polls and opinion pieces about favourite TV dads, such as Philip Banks (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), Jack Pearson (This is Us), Michael Kyle (My Wife and Kids) and, my personal favourite, Phil Dunphy in the US sitcom Modern Family. These fictional characters remind us that father-child relationships can be loving, beautiful and attentive, but also messy, strained and complicated.

It’s easy for us to project our desires, disappointments and expectations on to TV characters or other people.

In them, we recognise our hopes and heartbreaks.

Developmental psychologists explain that an early indicator of emotional health and growth can be found in how babies bond with their carers. This is called attachment theory: babies form secure attachments to the person who accurately anticipates and meets their needs. Great relationships can make us feel secure and set us up to be confident in who we are.

Phil Dunphy is my favourite TV dad because he is consistent, dependable and brings his family joy. He is a good dad.

One Bible writer reminds us that God, too, is a good dad. James said: ‘Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father’ (James 1:17 New Living Translation).

God and his love are constant, fixed and unwavering. It gives me comfort to know that, in and among all the complications of human relationships, there is security to be found in him.

For all of us, no matter how we are feeling about ourselves or our families, we need never miss out on a heavenly Father’s love.

He is consistent and dependable

18 June 2022 • WAR CRY • 13

1. Gene Wilder. 2. Taylor Swift. 3. Twelfth Night.

4. 150cm sq. 5. Edinburgh. 6. 1958.

PUZZLES Quick CROSSWORD

SUDOKU

ACROSS 1. First appearance (5) 5. Gem (5) 8. Greeting (5) 9. Toadstools (5) 10. Employing (5) 11. More pleasant (5) 12. Be full of (4) 15. Securely (6) 17. Waterway (5) 18. Idea (6) 20. Prejudice (4) 25. Trainer (5) 26. Scope (5) 27. Shining (5) 28. Restaurant car (5) 29. Squander (5) 30. Blended (5) DOWN 1. Flaw (6) 2. Botch (6) 3. Cogitate (5) 4. Bar (5) 5. Newspaper (7) 6. Complain (6) 7. Bequest (6) 13. Self-esteem (3)

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

Fill the grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9

9 4 5 6 4 7 9 2 3 5 Pale (3) Tree juice (3) Meadow (3) Yield (7) Not wide (6)

19.

21.

22.

23.

24.

Articles (6) Flowing in (6) Packed (6) Stain (5) Allure (5)

2 6 8 7 9

8 9 2 3 6 2 8 1 3 6 5 3 8 5 4 6

WORDSEARCH

8 7 9 1 4 6 3 2 5 2 4 5 7 3 8 9 6 1 Look up, down, forwards, backwards and diagonally on the 3 associated 6 1 5with9 encouragement 2 7 8 4 grid to find these words 4 1 2 3 6 5 8 7 9 ZWC N O F WK C P S K Z D V F B P 9 T 2X U7 B W 4 Q1 6 P N E X X T Z5 R 8 E A3 I U R E A S S U R7 A 9 N C6E F4 F 8M F1 L 2 K R5 3 P V Z T J Z K O ZWN O A QMR F W 6 I 5A E4 U 1 L I Q R M Q H9 F 2 F X8Y A Q E3 7 T L R E F R E6 S 3 H M7E N T E Z K 8 1 9 5Z L4 2 J N F N SW L P J MOQ H S V N X K 2 L 7X I3 N 6P F9 8 M E Q G E C P1 Z 5 S I 4A C

M O HONEYC B Each solution starts on the coloured cell and reads clockwise round the number 1. Close-fitting necklace 2. Turn into ice 3. Sitting room 4. A father or mother 5. Scattered rubbish 6. Protective object used by warriors

KQF T T XHH I WN E J I QN L V S I E OMN P ZOG ECX E OXRD ZWZ S

ANSWERS 8 2 3 4 5 7 9 6 1

7 4 6 1 8 9 2 3 5

9 5 1 2 3 6 8 7 4

1 7 5 3 9 4 6 8 2

4 3 9 6 2 8 5 1 7

6 8 2 5 7 1 4 9 3

3 9 7 8 4 2 1 5 6

2 6 8 7 1 5 3 4 9

5 1 4 9 6 3 7 2 8

HONEYCOMB 1. Choker. 2. Freeze. 3. Lounge.

4. Parent. 5. Debris. 6. Shield.

QUICK CROSSWORD ACROSS: 1. Debut. 5. Jewel. 8. Hello. 9. Fungi.

10. Using. 11. Nicer. 12. Teem. 15. Safely. 17. Canal.

18. Notion. 20. Bias. 25. Coach. 26. Range.

27. Aglow. 28. Diner. 29. Waste. 30. Mixed.

DOWN: 1. Defect. 2. Bungle. 3. Think. 4. Block.

5. Journal. 6. Whinge. 7. Legacy. 13. Ego. 14. Wan. 15. Sap. 16. Lea. 17. Concede.

18. Narrow. 19. Things. 21. Influx. 22. Stowed.

23. Taint. 24. Charm.

14 • WAR CRY • 18 June 2022

E J X C S Z L D B C

D F UU L L ON I E I S B S CQ CQ J N

ASSISTANCE CHEER COMFORT CONFIDENCE CONSOLATION ENLIVEN FAITH FORTITUDE

K T R A X I T SH F I D F Y T QP Z ZMT GK T ARN E PO

L U D E T R R X R H

X V G J OA NC BG L D OP A F FQ CO

X V O E C Q P Q Z J

C I O Z C U U Z R S

SN T J SO L L A E LW RZ Y ZQX SMX KHC CRX NNU

HELPFULNESS HOPE REASSURANCE REFRESHMENT RELIEF STRENGTHENING SUCCOUR SUPPORT

3 5

8

5 4 6

Leek, kale and herb omelette with salad Ingredients 80g salad leaves 1tsp lemon juice 3tsp olive oil 6 medium free-range eggs 5g flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped 3g chives, finely chopped Salt and ground black pepper 100g leeks, washed and thinly sliced 50g kale, stalks removed and leaves finely sliced

Method Toss the salad leaves in a bowl with the lemon juice and olive oil and set aside.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, parsley, chives and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Heat the oil in a non-stick pan and cook the leeks and kale for 2 minutes, stirring frequently, until they are slightly softened. Pour the egg and herb mixture into the pan.

When the egg starts to set on the outside and pull away from the side of the pan, flip it over to cook the other side for a few minutes. Once ready, fold the omelette in half and remove from the pan. Slice in half and serve each half on a plate with the salad leaves.

SERVES

2

Carrot, beetroot and harissa hummus wraps Ingredients 25g pine nuts 100g hummus 1tsp harissa 1 large carrot, washed, peeled and grated 2 medium beetroots, washed, peeled and grated 2 lemons, juice 2 large wholemeal flatbreads 1 red onion, finely sliced 50g spinach

Method Toast the pine nuts in a small pan on a medium heat until golden brown, taking care not to burn them, then set aside. Combine the hummus with the harissa in small bowl.

In a separate bowl, combine the carrot, beetroots and lemon juice.

Lay the flatbreads out and spread the hummus and harissa mixture over them. Then lay the red onion, spinach and parsley on top. Spoon over the carrot and beetroot mixture, then sprinkle with the toasted pine nuts.

Season with a pinch of salt.

Roll into wraps and cut each in half, to serve.

10g fresh flat-leaf parsley Salt Recipes reprinted, with permission, from the Vegetarian Society website vegsoc.org

SERVES

2

18 June 2022 • WAR CRY • 15

The Lord is near to those who are discouraged; he saves those who have lost all hope Psalm 34:18 (Good News Bible)

WAR CRY