we love because He first loved us.: Forgive them, Father; they know not what they do.
Last night at Lifeteen, another Core and I were leading small group and veered off course about random, stupid stuff. Jokes lead to other jokes and somehow we end up laughing about the possibility of running into President Obama at a McDonald’s in Albuquerque. My other Core member says that if he ever met him, he’d take out a picture of a dismembered, aborted baby and say, “Thanks for doing this.”
I feel like I can’t breathe. Even just hearing that, hearing the anger in his voice, seeing the look on my kid’s faces, I can’t breathe. I can’t bear to believe that people think like that. My heart is aching. I feel like all of this is escalating and it is killing me. All of this is breaking my heart.
I’m not a theologian. I’m not anything, really. But let me tell you something: you do not get a say in who Jesus died for. If you are drawing lines in humanity, if you are creating divisions that were never really there in the first place, you are doing this wrong. If you are looking at your brothers and sisters and calling them your enemy, you are doing this wrong. If you are telling someone that they do not belong to Jesus because they don’t understand doctrine, or even because they refuse to follow it, you are doing this wrong. The minute you start casting people into good and bad sides, the minute you start believing that your brothers and sisters are truly evil, the minute you forget that you are made of the same love is the minute we have lost. I am praying for forgiveness for all of the times I let myself believe I was at war with my own flesh and blood and I am praying for yours, too. I am praying that our eyes will be opened.
Remember, O man, that you are but dust; that your wife is dust, that your children are dust, that your neighbors are dust, that your enemies are dust, that your loved ones are dust and unto dust shall you all return.
