Resilient? Yes! Repentant? ... well ....!

     President Obama, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and many people are praising the Japanese people by calling them "resilient".
     I agree with them. I think it's true. These people, this nation are unusually "resilient". They are a remarkable culture and a special country.
     Look at their past: living on this chain of volcanic islands frequently hit by typhoons, earthquakes and tsunami, they have over the centuries learned to adapt. They are unlike any other group that I know. They regularly and repeatedly practice for disasters on all levels: family, company, neighborhood, city, prefecture and nation-wide. They take it as a matter of fact that they need to be prepared to evacuate. They drill and re-drill, train and re-train what to do "in case".
     Time after time Japan has been hit by natural disasters. Time after time it has recovered. And not only "natural" disasters either: after world war two Japan was decimated. Over 60 cities had been fire bombed and were burned to the ground and that was before the nuclear blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki! Yet they recovered. Economic disasters have struck Japan too and the result has been the same.
     Look at their architecture and infrastructure: If any of the earthquakes since our big one on March 11 had hit a Brisbane house I shudder to think what would have happened. (!) But our house and hundreds of thousands (millions?) of houses, apartments, offices, shops, skyscrapers, railway stations, roads, bridges, factories, towers etc suffered no damage at all! Not even a crack in the plaster! Amazing. I've got to take my hat off to the builders and designers. Amazing! Resilience is built in.
     People here value "endurance", "persistence", "patience", the ability to not quit, to not moan, to not give up. The most common expression of encouragement that you hear repeated many times everyday is "Ganbatte!" or "Ganbare!" which means precisely that: "Keep it up!" "Hang in there!"  "Do your best!" The grin and bear it attitude is taken as a given.
     Resilient? Yes I believe my Japanese friends certainly are and I admire them for it.
     I ask myself though: "What is God looking for?" "What is valuable in God's eyes?"
     Resilience is a great virtue for Christians. God undoubtedly wants His people to be resilient and to hang in there when times get tough and to be brave and not give up when we face trials and to spring back and respond with love in the face of persecution and to recover from whatever the world throws at us. After all that's the message of Easter: we follow a RESURRECTED Jesus.
     But in a land where over 99% are not yet Christians? What does resilience do for them? Does it mean that they will recover their hard un-believing hearts? Does it translate into an uncanny ability to spring back to their original self-willed, stubborn insistence to live without even acknowledging God? Will it express itself by lives rising up from the ashes to believe in themselves and pride themselves on their own achievements? What if "resilience" means "no change"?!
     I fear for this land where God has called me. I fear for these people who God has given me a love for.
     Jesus calls us first to repentance, not to resilience!
     Here and there every so often we think we are seeing some of this gift of repentance. Hallelujah! Help us by your prayers please.