大象传媒

Good morning.

听

Fifty nine years ago 听Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin were leaving the Crimea having signed the Yalta Agreement the day before. They had been meeting since February 4th 1945. Their purpose was to discuss the re-organization of post-war Europe. The Yalta conference was the middle of three conferences all addressing the re-establishment of order and peace. Their success is a matter for debate but as in every situation following conflict and war, the leaders gathered to do their best for their own people and to find a way through their difficulties.

听

This work did not mean that those who gathered at Yalta would remain firm friends. It would not be long before the Cold War brought its chill in relationships. But better this than outright war and associated atrocities. The big picture of compromise and rebuilding, of seeking a better peace and sustainable relationships is only part of the story. Woven within the big picture are the ordinary human stories of people who lost loved ones, of a people almost exterminated, of power gone mad, of lives wasted and of people caught up in situations which they would not normally choose to be involved in. Those are the human stories of tragedy, grief, guilt, remembering, anger, hatred, hope, determination and despair. They are the ordinary human stories that weave their way inside every big picture and they are the stories that should influence how the big picture looks.听

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Lord, 听assure us that the stories of ordinary people, with all the emotions they contain, do matter in all the big pictures of the human story, Amen