Sometimes the news just makes me despair; if not for the world, at least for any hope we have of making sense of it. I got back after a few days' post-Christmas break and the papers are full of Benazir Bhutto's assassination.

Why?

What has anyone to gain from her being killed? It serves no political purpose that I can see. If it is a personal vendetta, then the beneficiaries will be the dynasty she is almost certain now to have founded. The country is in far greater danger of falling into anarchy than it was before she was shot, or however she died. And maybe that's the point. Maybe people want chaos.

I know I cannot sit in my comfortable western home and cast judgement... I suppose I just wish I could understand.

As we start 2008 all this makes me feel that I need to be careful how I pray. I cannot merely ask the Almighty to impose my solutions on a situation I cannot grasp. I need to pray, as I have been taught, "your will be done, your kingdom come...", but there is more than that here. I don't understand much of what is happening in this world. It is fallen and broken. My prayer for his will must be accompanied by a humble acceptance of that in my life too.

Now that's a new year's resolution worth working for!