The words of Andreas Liveras a British multi-millionaire marked me. His final hours were broadcast to the world through the BBC. He'd gone down to the hotel dining room for a pre-dinner drink and something to eat. He could reasonably take for granted that all would be well, his visit to India would end and he'd come back home to whatever life awaited him back in the UK. We cannot live our lives in any way other than assume that this will be the case. Perhaps the people in Baghdad were living out their day to day lives on the night when the words "shock and awe" took on a new meaning. And so tonight I'll go to bed wondering whether Charlton can pull things round, if my daughter will get through her GCSE mocks OK, my son will make any progress with his university application; if my contract will be renewed.
Is that reasonable or is that just complacency. I remember as a boy going to a Christian retreat and being terrified by one of those "fire and brimstone" sermons designed to shake me into repentance. The message then was you might be going back to your tent in 30 minutes but what if this was the night when God's judgement rained down on the world. What account would you be able to give of yourself? I am not sure about fire and brimstone but perhaps if we embraced the notion that all this could end very quickly, that those plans for our futures were futile, that the reckoning was going to begin now and not in 20 years we might treat the here and now and the people around us very differently. Certainly we would remember that in the war on terror the victims are not "terror" but fellow human beings.
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