This year’s Easter long weekend is particularly long due to Easter coinciding with ANZAC day.
Australia is sometimes known as the land of the long weekend, but over the years ANZAC day has helped shape a national identity of a different sort; equating courage, discipline, and sacrifice as qualities intrinsically Australian. It’s a day that reminds us of the sacrifice made by our countrymen and women in years past; and in particular that of those who went to war and didn’t return.
My grandfather used to tell me the story of fighting along the Kokoda track, the battle at Shaggy ridge; and as a battalion intelligence officer, being a part of the Japanese surrender ceremony at Kendari in the Celebes (now Sulawesi in Indonesia) in 1945 – at which his Japanese counterpart gave my granddad his family Samurai sword as a sign of surrender. (Also my father having fought in 2 wars, and my great grandfather having been in the artillery, may have influenced my decision to join the army at 17!)
I certainly don’t want to glorify war, but as a country, we do have a history of great sacrifice on the battlefield, and I can’t reflect on ANZAC day, and the sacrifice of men and women who have laid down their lives for the freedom of others, without also thinking about Jesus’ words, “greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends”(John 15).
This is what we remember on ANZAC day; not celebrating war, but remembering and honouring sacrifice. This is also what we remember at Easter; but on this occasion we also celebrate! Jesus’ perfect sacrifice – laying down his life for us – restoring us to relationship with God, didn’t come about by treaty or mutual decision, but by taking our sin upon Himself.
For those of us in Christ, this is the most amazing news! Once we were dead in our transgressions, but now we’re alive in Jesus! He died in our place, and rose again to take the place of glory at the right hand of the Father. So, this extended long weekend, as you eat hot cross buns, consume chocolate, participate in church services, or wake up early for a dawn service, remember the ultimate sacrifice… God’s son.
Don.
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Khattala one of the ringleaders of the Sept. 11 attack on the American diplomatic mission here. But just days after President Obama reasserted his vow to bring those responsible to justice, Mr. Abu Khattala spent two leisurely hours on Thursday evening at a crowded luxury hotel, sipping mango juice on a patio and scoffing at the threats coming from the American and Libyan governments.Enlarge This ImageEsam Omran Al-Fetori/ReutersA man near the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya, after the attack last month.elatedClearing the Record About Benghazi (October 18, 2012
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Attack on U.S. Mission in Benghazi Becomes Subject of Strongest Words (October 17, 2012)World Twitter Logo.Connect With Us on TwitterFollow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
Twitter List: Reporters and EditorsReaders’ CommentsShare your thoughts.Post a Comment »Read All Comments (59) »
Libya’s fledgling national army is a “national chicken,” Mr.
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found weapons, including explosives and guns mounted with silencers, inside the American compound.Although Mr. Abu Khattala’s exact role remains unclear, witnesses have said they saw him directing other fighters that night. Libyan officials have singled him out, and officials in Washington say they are examining his role.
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Khattala one of the ringleaders of the Sept. 11 attack on the American diplomatic mission here. But just days after President Obama reasserted his vow to bring those responsible to justice, Mr. Abu Khattala spent two leisurely hours on Thursday evening at a crowded luxury hotel, sipping mango juice on a patio and scoffing at the threats coming from the American and Libyan governments.Enlarge This ImageEsam Omran Al-Fetori/ReutersA man near the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya, after the attack last month.elatedClearing the Record About Benghazi (October 18, 2012
Louis Vuitton Belts
Attack on U.S. Mission in Benghazi Becomes Subject of Strongest Words (October 17, 2012)World Twitter Logo.Connect With Us on TwitterFollow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
Twitter List: Reporters and EditorsReaders’ CommentsShare your thoughts.Post a Comment »Read All Comments (59) »
Libya’s fledgling national army is a “national chicken,” Mr.
Coach Factory Online
Abu Khattala said, using an Arabic rhyme. Asked who should take responsibility for apprehending the mission’s attackers, he smirked at the idea that the weak Libyan government couldCoach Factory Outlet
possibly do it. And he accused the leaders of the United States of “playing with the emotions of the American people” and “using the consulate attack just to gather votes for their elections.”Mr. Abu Khattala’s defiance — no authority has even questioned him about the attack, he said, and he has no plans to go into hiding —
Coach Outlet Online
offered insight into the shadowy landscape of the self-formed militias that have come to constitute the only source of social order in Libya since the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.A few, like the militia group Ansar al-Shariah that is linked to Mr. Abu Khattala and that officials in Washington and Tripoli agree was behind the attack, have embraced an extremist ideology hostile to the West and nursed
Coach Outlet Online
ambitions to extend it over Libya. But also troubling to the United States is the evident tolerance shown by other militias alliedGucci Belts
with the government, which have so far declined to take any action against suspects in the Benghazi attack.Although Mr. Abu Khattala said he was not a member of Al Qaeda, he declared he would be proud to be associated with Al Qaeda’s puritanical zeal for Islamic law. And he said that the United States had its own foreign policy to blame for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Why is the United States always trying to
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impose its ideology on everyone else?” he asked. “Why is it always trying to use force to implement its agendas?Coach Factory Outlet
”Owing in part to the inability
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of either the Libyans or the Americans to mount a serious investigation, American dissections of the assault on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi have become muddled in a political debate over the identities and motivations of the attackers. Some Republicans have charged that the Obama administration initially sought to obscure a possible connection to Al Qaeda in order toCoach Factory Outlet Online
protect its claim to have brought the group to its knees.Mr. Abu Khattala, 41, wearing a red fez and sandals, added his own spin. Contradicting the accounts of many
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witnesses and the most recent account of the Obama administration, he contended that the attack had grown out of a peaceful protest against a video made in the United States that mocked the Prophet Muhammad and Islam.He also said that guards inside the compound — Libyan or American, he was not sure — had shot first at the demonstrators, provoking them. And he asserted, without providing evidence, that the attackers had
Coach Factory Outlet
found weapons, including explosives and guns mounted with silencers, inside the American compound.Although Mr. Abu Khattala’s exact role remains unclear, witnesses have said they saw him directing other fighters that night. Libyan officials have singled him out, and officials in Washington say they are examining his role.
But Mr. Abu Khattala insisted that he had
Coach Factory Online
not been part of the aggression at the American compound. He said he had arrived just as the gunfire was beginning to crackle and had sought to break up a traffic jam around the demonstration. After fleeing for a time, he said, he entered the compound at the end ofHermes Belts
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He pointedly declined to condemn the idea that the demolition of a diplomatic mission was an appropriate response to such a video.
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