Sam

     That I am a hypocrite, I say with no pretence. I am a hypocrite because I claim to believe in a Person who forgave those who went a few extra miles in torturing and dragging Him to the hilltop where He was to die; forgave those who killed His followers; forgives habitual sinners; forgives those who have one foot in hell but I do not forgive. I was forgiven, I am forgiven and I will be forgiven if I repent. That is the assurance the Scripture gives me.          But I do not forgive.          Mercy I get readily, 24/7 and with no strings attached. Mercy I give with a reluctant heart, after a long pause and with a laundry list of clauses. Sometimes I do not have mercy on others at all. Somehow, I missed one of the most important take home messages of my faith, in fact a map back home.          I missed the lesson of forgiveness, I missed Christianity.          I’ll tell you frankly that to me ‘Forgiveness’ is a cliché, another boring Sunday homily, something that moves me o

      Seventy years ago this day, among millions of dead and dying, as iron crosses glimmered on adolescents’ chests, with piles of those who had been living corpses being discovered, with thousands still fighting for their divine Emperor, with two cities oblivious to what is going to hit them in three months’ time, with half a continent being placed on the dinner platter of communism, peace was declared.      In the beginning of the twentieth century, after decades of unrest, a wrong turn of the car plunged Europe into a ‘necessary war’ pulling most of the known world into it. Peace was declared at the end of it too. Peace in the midst of humiliation and punishment for some, retribution for others but for a very many people it was when rape, confiscation, torture and murder were still fresh in their memories. The ‘Peace time’ that would follow the Great War would produce the boots, the tanks and the boats that would yet again strike unimaginable terror on human life. Peace tim