Is Your Heart Troubled
Frankly, the last five years the air has felt thick with a blanket of argument, of fighting. Pick your media, right or left, you’ll be fed the same, talking heads berating those on whatever the other side may be.
It’s so very frustrating. It’s exhausting. And, heartbreakingly, sometimes it spills over to the church. People are set for a fight, the issue is not what’s important, the defending is. Perhaps more sadly, we can find ourselves drawn into it. And, it pushes us toward hate, toward hating those with whom we disagree. Today, may I remind us of three truths:
We become what we feed on: May I suggest that we put down the remote and pick up the Bible podcast. May I suggest we stop arguing with a picture and start talking to God. If we spend more time with FOX and CNN than the FATHER and CHRIST, we will be more political than spiritual. Check yourself on this. Be honest with you.
We are to love, even our enemies: It’s so easy for those on the other side to become idiots, for us to consider them evil, and to allow ourselves to be triggered by a slogan, a t-shirt, or a hat. Yes, there is a war, but that war is not against things of this earth. Could the Lord have been more specific? “If we only love those who love us, we are no better than the pagans.” But, we are to be better than the pagans. If it were easy everyone would do it. It is hard, but let us be led by love for even the worst. Jesus died for them as much as for us.
We are ambassadors of peace: It is only the peace found in the Lord that will change a heart. And, yes, we can have peace. As 135,000 Midianites surrounded Israel, Gideon was in conflict until he moved his focus from them to HIM. Then as war threatened all around he built an altar and in his worship named it Jehovahshalom. Translated: The Lord is Peace. We too can have peace when things around us escalate if we worship the Lord and remember: The Lord is Peace. And it won’t make sense to others - the Spirit moved Paul’s pen to describe that “peace that passes understanding.” It can be ours and we are called upon to imitate it and to bring it.
May God bless your heart, mind, soul, and strength in the current climate.