Love Everyone, All the Time
I was vaguely aware something had happened on Saturday, but with company coming late that night, and weekends being a time of sabbath when I rarely look at my phone, or any device, for that matter, I really had no idea. As a result I was ignorant of the horror had happened in Virginia or I would have addressed it in some way yesterday morning. I am grieved.
At first I had no words. I'm still at a loss. The sad thing is how this has been politicized. While it is arguably true that the response by leadership has been dismal, the truth is, racial hate and growing rage (on all sides, and also arguably a result of dismal leadership) caused this tragedy. A young woman died and many were injured because of a thoughtless and murderous action precipitated by a growing and emboldened movement of racial (actually anything deemed objectionable, and the list is long) hatred.
We must stand against hatred of any kind! Hatred and spiteful attitudes toward anyone because of their race, religion, gender (or sexual preference), politics, denomination, etc., etc., etc. is not acceptable for a Christ Follower and we must reject the urge to fall into their the satanic grip. Our attitude should be to love everyone all the time.
I'd like to think that ABCers, and anyone else who might read this, don't fall into the hater category, but I don't want to be naive either. So please know this, if there is anything that we should have received from our study of 1 John over the past couple months, it should be that Christ Followers are to be the love of Christ to all people, all the time. We are also to respect everyone, all the time. Peter writes, Show proper respect to everyone, 1 Peter 2:17a (Read the entire chapter for the full context). Will it be easy? Nope! Is it right? Yep!
There will be opportunities to publicly take a stand, like the Prayer Vigil I used for the graphic here and in other ways. But even if you cannot or choose not to, pray. Pray for your own attitude, and for this hurting nation that needs Jesus more desperately than ever. This is not going to get better until the haters and the hated know their need for Jesus and receive him. Until then, we must be Jesus.
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