The Editor, Sir:

I agree with Prime Minister Simpson Miller that the upcoming polls don’t have to be bloody, and that Jamaicans are not “irredeemably violent”. Please allow me to identify a link between her comments and your coverage on an upcoming evangelistic crusade under the caption, ‘It’s a time for miracles in Jamaica’.

To imply that God has not been performing miracles in Jamaica would be both erroneous and ungrateful, but many Christians would agree that we can use all the Divine intervention we can get, on a national scale. The Bible says that God sends His rain (general provision) on both the just and the unjust (routinely). However, miracles are different.

Praying for miracles

Miracles come in response to human actions such as prayer and the obedient exercise of faith in word and deed. So, I trust that one of the miracles heading up the corporate prayer request list at that July 20-22 crusade, will be for the campaign and election period of political activity to be free of criminal behaviour.

Now, that would be a miracle of the order that the Apostles called “notable miracles”, but we know it is possible, with God. So, let us put our prayers where our declarations are. Despite all good intentions, very little confidence can be put into proclamations of peace without the foundations of prayer and obedience on the part of the Church.

However, with those bases covered, our Prime Minister is quite right – we CAN be redeemed from the national history of electoral violence, and this election CAN come to pass without blood-letting, by the grace of God.

I am, etc.,

M. EVANGELINE ANDERSON

meanderson@rogers.com

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Via Go-Jamaica