Yvonne Webb

As crime con­tin­ues to es­ca­late in this coun­try, a Pres­by­ter­ian min­is­ter has ad­vised cit­i­zens to flee from dan­ger if there is a plot to kill them. "You do not have to fight every bat­tle. You do not have to be strong all the time. You do not have to show how pow­er­ful and mighty you are in every cri­sis," Rev­erend Dr Ran­dall Sammah said at the open­ing of Grant Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian School's Creche and Tree Light­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Fri­day evening.

A rep­re­sen­ta­tive who brought greet­ings on be­half of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion al­so not­ed that through­out this Christ­mas sea­son if peo­ple fo­cused on the love that God gave in bring­ing forth his son, T&T would be a bet­ter place."This is how we would work to­wards avoid­ing crime, in terms of how we treat and teach our chil­dren, our fu­ture gen­er­a­tion, our lead­ers of to­mor­row."

Rev Sammah said the bib­li­cal sto­ry of King Herod's de­ci­sion to mur­der all male in­fants to en­sure King Je­sus did not live to over­throw him, is a part of the Christ­mas sto­ry that is not told very of­ten.He point­ed out that when Je­sus' life was in dan­ger, his par­ents heed­ed the ad­vice of an­gels to flee to an­oth­er land un­til the dan­ger had passed. In this cen­tu­ry, he said, Je­sus, Mary and Joseph would have been la­belled refugees.

"So what the an­gels told Mary and Joseph, to run and flee from a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion, is good ad­vice for us. "You and I don't need to stay and fight every storm that comes in­to our life." Sammah said there was no dis­grace in run­ning to avoid a fight un­til one was bet­ter pre­pared for it. Sit­u­a­tions of ad­ver­si­ty which present them­selves, he point­ed out, are God's way of teach­ing us that there is wis­dom in wait­ing to fight our bat­tles at the right time.

The min­is­ter ob­served that it was nat­ur­al hu­man re­sponse to want to re­tal­i­ate, but he said there is no need to pre­tend we can han­dle every sit­u­a­tion of ad­ver­si­ty."We are liv­ing in a time, in a so­ci­ety where so many peo­ple are anx­ious to pick a fight. So many peo­ple want to be con­fronta­tion­al with us. So many peo­ple are ea­ger to watch us in our faces and tell us things that hurt, or tell us things that are mean to de­stroy our spir­it.

"Here we see Mary and Joseph avoid­ing a con­fronta­tion, find­ing shel­ter in a dis­tant land, wait­ing for the storm to pass and wait­ing for God's guid­ance."Link­ing the sto­ry to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Rev Sammah said: "There are times when we need to take shel­ter from a storm."He in­vit­ed all present, in­clud­ing coun­cil­lor John Mark Chankers­ingh rep­re­sent­ing San Fer­nan­do May­or Mar­lene Coudray and Bish­op Jan­kee Raghu­nanan, rep­re­sent­ing Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, to put all their bat­tles in God's hands.