One day last December, I was busy taking a French test at about 4 in the afternoon. Suddenly, the school secretary came in and starting rolling down the window shutters. She anounced, "There are demonstrations going on again tonight. The police have told us to evacuate the neighborhood. So please take your time, but hurry up." Our school is located in a part of Brussels with a large Congolese population, and several hundred Congolese ex-patriots had been protesting the recent elections in Congo. Certain thugs had taken advantage of the unrest to break shop windows and set cars on fire. So, we were asked to be careful on our way home. Needless to say, I didn't do that well on my test. This section is also the closest shopping area to our house, so we did our Christmas shopping there. It made for a bizarre shopping experience to pass by riot police and SWAT vans on our way to the toy store. You may have heard of this on the news, but also in December, Belgium experienced a horrific shooting. In the central square of the city, not far from where I once lived, a gunman opened fire with an AK-47 and threw grenades at the noon crowd. 5 people died and 15 were injured. The shooter was an ex-convict who was scheduled to go back to prison. Belgium is such a peaceful place, and very few people have guns, so this incident sent shock waves across the country.
January had its own share of noise, as the new government was greeted by a series of strikes by the different trade unions. We use the metro and tram a lot, so we have to keep an eye on the news to know whether the transport workers are going to show up or not.
...and in that day people will look to their Maker and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.
