Wednesday 1 October 2008

Crunch Time

If you watch tv news or read the papers it is unlikely that you haven't heard the term credit crunch.

As someone who has no training in economics or banking it is a little bit hard to understand it all. The issue at the moment seems to be whether or not governments should use taxpayers money to try to prop up the economy. For people of the left that shouldn't be such an issue, for those on the right, it should be heresy! What seems to be messing things up is that the recipients of the money from Joe Public would appear to be the big banks, whom the right traditionally like, and the left don't like! Nothing like money to mess with ideology.

What seems a little worrying is that politicians are arguing for injections of government money but indicating that the day of reckoning is yet to come - without defining what that means.

Where does this leave us as Christians? In the same boat as everyone else - but with faith.

Whatever happens, God is faithful. I am reminded of the experience of the hymn writer H.G. Spafford. He was a successful businessman who lost all his material possessions in the great fire in Chicago in 1873. A few weeks later his wife and four daughters set sail for France. The ship they were travelling on was rammed by another liner and sank. His wife survived and telegrammed her husband from Wales with the stark words "Saved, alone".

Out of deep grief Spafford wrote these words:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
"It is well, it is well with my soul."

For some Christian commentary on what's going on in the markets (America in particular) see A Christian view of the Economic Crisis

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