Jenga

I love puzzles – a passion reignited when I became a grandfather a few years back.  I love seeing the joy on the faces of my grandchildren when they complete a jigsaw puzzle, win at Peppa Pig snap or beat Papa at connect 4.  It’s a gift that keeps on giving.  One puzzle which is guaranteed to create a competitive environment is the classic Jenga.  For the uninitiated, Jenga is a game of physical skill where players take turns removing one block at a time from a tower constructed of 54 blocks, stacked into a solid rectangular tower of 18 layers, with three blocks per layer.  
Each block removed is then placed on top of the tower, creating a progressively more unstable structure. The game ends when one player removes a block which causes the tower become so unstable that it falls.
There are times in my life when circumstances are such that I am faced with a number of possibilities of how I could act at a particular time or respond to something said in a particular discussion. I am presented with a jenga moment – where I am aware that my actions or words could have negative consequences – perhaps even causing relationships to collapse because my action has made things too unstable. At such times I need to balance my fear, with the need to ensure that I do not shirk my responsibilities to speak up for the marginalised and the voiceless.
I am convinced that similar jenga moments are faced by nations and their leaders – times when they become justifiably nervous about what they should say or do because of the possibility of any negative consequences of their actions.
At times, there is a fear, rightly felt, that by speaking or acting without appropriate consideration they might just remove the block supporting the status quo and all will collapse. While I understand that leaders carry a huge responsibility in making the decisions for us and living with the consequences, all our actions have consequences, not all of which can be determined in advance.
I think we are at that moment now with what we are witnessing in Ukraine. It’s a jenga moment on a world scale.
I cannot see how religious leaders in Russia and Ukraine can believe in the same God when we have a Russian Orthodox Patriarch who is justifying Russia’s activities in the name of his God.
We have a world leader presiding over a catastrophic war where thousands of innocent people are dying in the name of “the Motherland”. 

I have no easy answers, no quick fix solutions, but surely we must be able to find some way to stop the carnage and allow love and grace to flow again. We need to tread carefully, but we can start with our Christian calling… to speak up for the voiceless.