Iran has been subjected to international economic sanctions for years. The general idea behind imposing sanctions on a country is to make people suffer so that they revolt against the prevailing regime. Does anyone give a passing thought to what is happening to ordinary people under these conditions? For instance do they think, “Yes, let’s teach them a lesson, down with this totalitarian regime, the nest of terrorism, let’s punish them and rid the world of this evil!” Or do they take a kinder view: “Have they enough bread, medicines, jobs? Can they treat cancer, haemophilia…?” My late mother’s only source of income was her United Nations widow’s pension. The monthly sum would be transferred to her bank in Tehran from the UN Staff Pensions office in New York. But after sanctions were imposed the money was withheld. She eventually died in financial straits without ever understanding why.
A wise man of God whose counsel I sought after months of worry for my family stuck in Iran, advised thus: When the plane is going to crash and oxygen masks drop down, get your mask on, and just breathe!
What am I to make of this advice – just breathe? Physical breathing is something we do all the time without thinking. But there is another form of respiration available to us; ‘spiritual breathing’, or breathing with the Holy Spirit, inhaling the purity of God’s trust and exhaling the impurity of our doubts. Lilies of the field never worry.
I think I may have found my oxygen mask.
