Letters to the Editor
View(s):Put an end to ways and means of narcotics getting back into society
Narcotic consumption among schoolchildren, undergraduates and members of society at large has raised its ugly head lately. This was echoed in Parliament by Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe on December 6. He insinuated something I suspected for a long time, that much of what is stored in Court storerooms is filched by irresponsible officers while it is left unguarded in such stores, while awaiting Court hearings, or surreptitiously pinched on its way for chemical analysis and finds its way back into society with catastrophic effects!
In fact it was reported recently in the print media, that two bars of gold had got ‘lost’ from such a store in a Court complex!
Public burning of every gram of narcotic soon after detection, with the approval of the judiciary, with careful check on its non-substitution (by flour etc), must be instituted pronto. Failure to do so will have disastrous consequences on our younger generation.
A concerned senior citizen Via email
May the Christ of the rustic manger be our inspiration this Christmas
This Christmas season could we not ponder awhile on the agonizing contrast between the event we are celebrating and the world of today in which we are celebrating it. The event—the birth of a child at Bethlehem centuries ago.
What has this to do with the world we live in today? A world of political hostility, racial hatred, economic warfare, of hunger and homelessness and unemployment, a world of cancer and AIDS? Has that birth at Bethlehem anything relevant to say in our age of bloodshed and killings, famine, earthquakes, and floods, of broken homes and broken hearts, and broken minds?
It is not a fairy tale. It is the most important event in history, and if and when the significance of that event is appreciated, it does to a man what it did to the shepherds then; it knocks him down on his knees in wonder and reverence, and then lifts him up again and sends him on his way singing, in joy and hope. “Be not afraid, I bring you tidings of great joy”.
The same message is still brought and it is still wonderfully good news.
The world in which Jesus first opened his eyes was no tinsel pretty world, but the dark interior of a grim stable. As Christina Rossetti puts it, “Saint and Angel, Ox and Ass, kept a watch together. He is born in an ill-lit draughty place, among the beasts, and the dirt disappears, the cold is banished, light streams in, and the beasts kneel. If we allow Him to be born in us, If God is allowed to enter the lives and affairs of men, then what happened in the Bethlehem cattleshed, can happen today in the world and in ourselves – if we will have it so. If we do not let Him in, He will not impose Himself upon us.
I quote “If God, with all power in His hands, deliberately chose to be born in a dirty manger, then He was making a dramatic statement about His identity and His mission on earth.”
The bleak truth of Christmas is that “He was in the world and the world knew Him not. He came into His own home, and His own people received Him not”.
The first Christmas present –so Christians believe – was God Himself. God’s love in person, on earth, and it was wrapped in swaddling clothes. May the Christ of the rustic manger be our inspiration this Christmas.
Therese Motha Via email
She
She! Nazareth’s lowly maid
By an angel prophetically hailed
To be the Mother of God
She!
In unquestioned obedience
In humble allegiance
Bowed to the will of God
She!
Ministering angel
Despite her delicate state
Went in haste
To attend on her cousin Elizabeth
She!
Travelled a long, tiresome way
Undismayed
Trustful of her God-given companion – Joseph
Uncomplaining.
She!
Settled for a stable
The only accommodation available
And there on a bed of straw
The Christ-child she bore,
She!
Knelt there
Bowed in adoration
And tender loving care
Over the Godhead
Entrusted to her care.
She! Mary,
The Mother of God
The Mother of all mankind
And Mother of mine.
Jeannette Cabraal Kelaniya
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