Easter is a glorious time and a very sad time.

There are many loved ones in our family who are sick at this time and are in our prayers.

Only this morning at 5AM Joan and I received a call from our wonderful Jamaican helper, Carlton Clemmings, who has been part of us for 25 years. In tears he informed us his wife, Patsy, who is only 50 had passed away this morning due to a blood clot. She had complained Tuesday (31) she was feeling unwell and the doctor she had seen had said it was only a bout of food poisoning.

Devastating and shocking.

Only last week and further from home we all heard the news of the aircraft that had been crashed deliberately into the French Alps killing all 149 souls on board.

The co-pilot in a fit of extreme madness wanted to commit suicide and we have to ask why did he need to take all those innocents to their deaths, too?

BBC News Presenter, Jamie Robinson was reading the news and his voice actually choked and cracked as he announced what the Flight Recorder had revealed. Screams from the passengers that went on for minutes……

Is this the time we blame God?

But God didn’t make that plane. God gave us the tools to make it. God gave us our mind. The mind to hold intelligence. It was the crazed mind of a man who took that plane down from the sky. It wasn’t God. What was inside this co-pilot’s temple? What madness had he let in? What madness sometimes creeps into yours and mine?

Doesn’t it feel as if the whole world has gone mad?

However, where are the headlines crying out for the thousands being slaughtered by mad thugs that we call terrorists and they call themselves freedom fighters? Fighting for what? Something that happened centuries ago and they want to take us back there. It’s just an excuse and some of us buy into this evil. And make no mistake. Behind this pretense is evil. And do we pretend it isn’t really happening?

Why isn’t the Christian Community not only here but the world crying out in outrage and condemnation over what is happening to their brothers and sisters and their children? Do they and we even so much as give them a prayer? Do we not cry for them? Where are our Leaders? Where is their statement of condemnation? Isn’t the Cayman Islands supposed to be a Christian country or do we only remember it is at Christmas and at Easter?

Where are all the statements ringing out from all the churches here, all the different denominations we have, telling out brothers and sisters in the Middle East they are not alone as they are thrown out of their homes, their children kidnapped, loved ones are beheaded because they refuse to denounce their faith?

I dread to even contemplate what is happening to the women. And to these evildoers a ten-year old child is a woman!

And we in the media don’t help. We decide what our audience shall hear.

What the USA media call World News is the US version of World News. If it doesn’t involve someone from the USA it gets little attention. The fact that there were 3 or 4 Americans on board the plane that crashed into the Alps meant it got the airing it deserved. And they hammered the fact there were those few Americans in every one of the headlines. What about the 149 passengers that included a classroom of children and their teachers? Aren’t we all one? Aren’t we all God’s children?

If a group of Americans had been thrown out of their homes, their children kidnapped and Americans were beheaded that would have made bigger headlines. The 4 or 5 Americans that caught Ebola made bigger headlines than the thousands of Africans who have died from it.

I am not singling out the American media. But it is supposed to be free. There aren’t restrictions on it such as many other countries, especially Communist ones. We did a little better here in Cayman but not nearly enough.

Do we want to actually mention the atrocities being done to our brothers and sisters that are thousand of miles away? It’s not in our backyard, you see.

So this Easter let’s focus on what is important and whether you are a Christian or not there is one thing we can all unite in. LOVE.

And don’t just leave LOVE at the Cross. Live LOVE all year long.

I dedicate this Poem by Anne Spiller to dear Carlton (and his 9 year old son, Samuel)

My Lost Love
I have only just lost you the pain is hard to bear
Do I have to go through life knowing you’re not there
please some one explain to me why she had to go
are there any reasons I really need to know
I sit here and remember all the lovely times we shared
the talks the laughter of every one you cared
I am told the pain will ease in time
and I will think of her without a tear
but that will be impossible as I need to have her here
She was my very world to me my ever guiding star
Just kiss me softly on the cheek and tell me where you are

Source: http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/my-lost-love#ixzz3W4zKh2F6