“Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it,
but whoever loses it will save it.”
~ Luke 17:33
Things have been simmering and percolating for sometime now and are now coming to a boil. Many people are fearful how things will eventually unfold or even explode. Oh, things have been bad for a while but these were things happenings in some remote faraway lands. But now things are going awry right in people’s backyards. And now comes the frantic scurrying to safety or the violent pushback for protection.
People driven by fear and hatred will tend to act out their fears and vent their hatred. People moved by love and compassion will end to act in accordance to their deepest values. People who are lost will tend to follow the loudest voices or merely go with the crowd. People with strength and resources will probably gain the initial upper hand. That is painting a grim scenario.
Thus, I will choose to act out of what I have always believed in and prayed over. I believe that love and compassion are stronger than anger and hatred and in fact will heal the wounds of anger and hatred.
I believe that life is stronger than death and that deep inside them people would rather want to build rather than destroy, to unite and work together rather than be divisive and exclude.
I believe that it our common appreciation for beauty that will build us our caring communities and that we are meant to be brothers and sisters rather than strangers and adversaries.
And we need not imagine these things but in fact can make them happen. For aren’t we humans, the apex of all God’s creation?
Where there is hatred let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
And where there is sadness, joy.
to be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive-
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
And it’s in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen