The people of Aleppo have been on my heart, soul and mind lately. I'm not sure why. I've met one of the refugee families here in Prince George only once and the closest I ever came to the Middle East was on a Bosphorus boat tour through Istanbul. Thus I can claim no real connection to the region or its people, though I've been mistaken for a native of that area many times.
Still, I felt strongly compelled to hold a one-man vigil for the people of Aleppo this week.
They certainly need our prayers now. And not to sound too clever by half - after all, people are in mortal peril as I write - but they could have used our sanctions and armed support a long time ago as well as our prayers.
We have failed them, assuming the word "we" means anything anymore in a certain group of nations that see themselves as the champions of human rights and freedom. Of course it's easy to argue over collective pronouns while you're not being bombed.
I'd apologize for sounding snide but the truth is I'm not sorry. There are people suffering all the atrocities that modern conflict can inflict on humans.
Again, using the word "we," the greatest minds and powers of the free world had several chances to honestly try and stop these tragedies from occurring; instead they made empty promises to the thousands of victims of the Syrian civil war, all while strongmen openly unleashed hell upon civilians and combatants indiscriminately.
As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ our saviour, we'd do well to recall the duty we owe our fellow man.
We have certainly failed to live up to the exhortation of "peace on earth and goodwill towards men," as the violence in a city closer to Bethlehem than we are to Vancouver clearly shows. Prayer is almost all we can offer at this point, at least until the dust settles.
But it didn't have to be this way - perhaps the West needs to recall that, "faith without works is dead."
Merry Christmas everyone.
