Matthew 5

It was the wrong week to watch a murder mystery, even the classic, Murder on the Orient Express.  Not because of the movie itself, or the acting but because the world has changed since I read it with my girls for English 5 years ago.  The years spent raising children have a meter of their own.  Days and weeks warp, as if contained within the lives of children is a 4^th dimension that can transport their loved ones back through time with a simple look or smile. By this chronology, 5 years is a lifetime.

Throughout those years, my husband and I spent time talking to our children about the importance of friends: making friends, managing friends and maintaining friends.  Lately, the conversation has turned to the less discussed ability human beings have to make enemies.  The conversations are difficult yet rich, revealing the truth that regardless of how you obtain enemies it is certain that you will make enemies through your friendships.  That can be a startling realization for a young mind. 

An enemy is defined by Webster’s as, “a person who hates another: a person who attacks or tries to harm another.”  How can something as comforting as friendship usher into my life someone whose intention it is to harm me?  This question has come to the forefront recently, as survivors share their stories wherein the pretense of friendship was stripped away leaving harm, pain and fear.  It is difficult to explain these situations if you do not believe in evil or acknowledge the presence of hate (its socially acceptable name).   

Social media and our online lives seem to have made the task of being hateful easier than ever before.  The ability to publish words and opinions, without even talking to those whom we disagree has become our meat and drink.  Why even this week, world leaders have traded insults, engaging in name calling as if it were an advanced form of foreign policy.  It might be comforting to imagine a new leadership will wash away the incivility that dominates our culture, but lately I have come to realize that overt corrosive public hatred is now an acceptable form of communication.

I know.  I’m slow.  Hate in all its forms has been around since the beginning of time, (or slightly after the beginning of time depending on how you measure these things) but to watch global vitriol increase is frightening.  Like the bird in Tinkerbell who hatches and then tries to jump back into its broken shell, sometimes I lack the courage to act in certainty and in opposition to my fear. When fear looms large, hate cannot be conquered.   

Which brings me back to the movie I shouldn’t have been watching… The movie centers on the theme of human revenge in the face of evil.  The apex of the narrative involves is a reenactment of a murder; the consummation of human revenge.  The hatred illustrated was all the more disturbing given the events which took place this week, wherein evil culminated in mass murder.  This violence took place in a church in a small Texas town, new territory for this deranged hatred.  Hundreds of lives lives shattered by violence.  The words, “Human justice is sometimes not enough,” spoken by the character of Poirot carried a weight of truth.  Human systems cannot bring justice to such evil.

My prayers this week join with the countless voices who are crying out for comfort for those who are mourning.  So many in the past few years...  So many who have faced injustice and hate through the decades...centuries.  I am praying that as a church God might grant us the grace to boldly love in the face of hate, to overcome evil with his goodness.  That somehow, our faith would make it past our own front door out into our world.

To those who have served their countries, we thank you for your service.  To those who have lost loved ones, our hearts ache for you.  We are thankful for your courage.  May Jesus, our friend, sustain you and comfort you in your suffering.

And even in our sleep,
pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until in our own despair, 
against our will,
 comes wisdom through the awful grace of God  ~Aeschylus~

xoxKaren