New Year Message – 2006
Dr Mark Tronson – Australian Cricket Chaplain

“A whirlwind” was how a good friend described my visit last May to Auschwitz’ 60th anniversary as part of a 48 international person delegation to be part of the “March of the Living”.

The experience took in various Nazi Holocaust centers one of which was Krakow in Poland hallmarked by the film “Schindler’s List” and which made headlines last week with the appointment of it’s first Rabbi since those terrible years.

This sense of “full circle” is ever with us in so many different ways from the “calamitous” to the “routine” within our life portraits.

The biblical journey provides many examples, such as the Old Testament figures of Joseph, Moses, David, Daniel and the New Testament character of Paul is a classic illustration.

Moreover every day life attest to this “full circle” idea with the building blocks many parents leave, upon which children established themselves, generation upon generation.

Within these unfolding “full circle” dramas there are inevitably “focal points” which can transform or provide the impetus to redirect, and May 2005’s “March of the Living” was such a situation for me.

It wasn’t so much the physical trauma that left its indelible mark, rather a Spiritual challenge with which the “whirlwind transformed”.

The Christian message in one sense is the most intolerant of all religious codes, in that its founder Jesus Christ said that no one comes to the Father but by me. Nothing could be less confusing and committed millions within Christendom waves this flag with sound intellectualism and life style.

Yet in another sense the Christian message is the most encompassing of all. It is nourished from its Jewish roots of justice and compassion. Jesus Christ who was Jewish said that His good news was for the poor, He proclaimed captives to be released, the blind to see, the downtrodden freed giving it a global and contemporary reach.

The “March of the Living” canvas allowed my perception to be enlarged in such a way that the “whirlwind transformed” the human aspect of the spiritual drama into a giant mural.

The question posed was ‘what does it mean to be a human being made in the image of God?’ when “sophisticated evil” has pervaded a cultured and educated western civilization.

The “whirlwind transformation” is illustrating a personal world view where the essence of “human well-being” becomes an essential part of the good news that Jesus Christ brings to this world.

The 2005 whirlwind experience has birthed a 2006 transformation of a world view that rejoices with the Jewish “living” and cries with the “downtrodden” and “spiritually bereft”.

A major aspect of any “full circle” is the biblical notion of hope that our risen Lord continually offers.

Dr Mark Tronson
http://www.bushorchestra.com