Welcome to Saturday’s reflection.
Today I reflect on the churches of South Sudan, who are trying to hold communities together at a moment when their country could easily fracture again, and on what Jesus may have meant when he called peacemakers “children of God.”
How far would you go to restore peace?
That is the question I had in my mind this week when I read about church leaders from South Sudan who travelled to Lambeth Palace in London with a simple request: please do not forget us. Their country is preparing for elections in December, the first national elections since independence in 2011, but the political situation remains fragile, and the possibility of renewed violence is very real.
The appeal came from the South Sudan Council of Churches, which has been working for years across some of the country’s deepest divisions. Its general secretary, the Revd Tut Kony Nyang Kon, spoke about bringing communities together and encouraging political leaders to choose dialogue rather than confrontation. It would be easy to read that as the sort of thing church leaders are expected to say.
What caught my attention was what they are actually doing.
