Tuesday, December 11, 2007

April 24

Those of you who have been following the (seemingly interminable) court processes will be relieved to know that today the four of us who pleaded not guilty received the date of our trial. We will front the Yeppoon Magistrates Court on April 24th 2008. Having already signed and submitted a formal admission of our presence on the base, we intend to argue that we had lawful excuse for doing so. While the chances of such an argument succeeding are slim, we plan to take the same spirit of transforming hopefulness, joy and peace into the courtroom that we took with us into the military zone.

If you're of the praying persuasion, please pray that the truth would be spoken and known on that day. Pray for boldness and courage, for peace and the presence of Christ in our words and actions.

For those who follow the church year, our trial date falls on the feast day of St Fidelis of Sigmaringen, who paid the ultimate price for refusing to renounce his beliefs (ironically, at the hands of my fellow Protestants). He died praying, as Jesus did, "Pardon my enemies, O Lord: blinded by passion they know not what they do." May we all, like Jesus, have the courage to renounce violence even when threatened, and learn to love and forgive our enemies.

2 comments:

Adele Goldie said...

Hello there,
good to see your blog site up and running good work. Hope you are all in good spirits. I think it's great what you are doing,thankyou for putting yourselves out there. It's unlikely i'll be at your trial as
there is an open action planned for pine gap around Anzac day 2008. This puts it very close to your court date. But I'll be keeping up with what you're doing and will send one of my childish prayers your way i've heard they're the best ones. All my love Adele

Samuel Hill 4 said...

hey adele...

yeah, it's a bummer the trial is so close to that weekend, will put all of us out of reach I think...but we'll very much be thinking of and praying for you all too.

simon m