The World and Our Country

The world and our country - the government and our people - can all feel chaotic this season, everything hectic and spinning. In light of it all, here is a small reminder for our hearts today:

We’re not helpless, not here. We live in a country “by the people, for the people,” and we don’t have to lay down and close our ears and bury our heads - not now, not ever. We can rise up, if we want. We can act, if we want. We can train ourselves for love, if we want.

Of course, we don’t act because of talking heads; we don’t run around putting out every new fire that blazes only to collapse in exhaustion without understanding, without making a dent. No, we don’t do this - but we do train ourselves for love, and fix our focus on hope, and use what has caught national attention to orient our hearts and minds to the cries of those around us. Are we listening? Do we have a right pulse on what people feel matter? Are we aware of who is hurting, outside of our own world? We’re all part of our world, of this world, of course.

Here are 5 things that come to mind to do this week, if we want. Have more thoughts? I’d love to hear!

1. We can learn. We can turn toward suffering, instead of away. Have we taken time to care? To research facts and stats, to know both sides? To respond intelligently, to respond gracefully? We are always responding, somehow - with silence or anger, with dismissal or hope, with truth or with fear. May we learn - so that we respond with love.

2. We watch our language. Are we criminalizing people groups or ethnicities? Are we speaking out of fear? Does our rhetoric objectify, turning people into animals or objects? Are we positioning ourselves into an “us” versus “them,” an “in” versus “out”? When others objectify, we humanize (both sides, both parties, all people). When others distance, we move close. We speak truth and love, we offer tenderness and care - matched with strength and discipline. We check our hearts - our words always flow from right here.

3. We welcome. We can think of who is most different from us, and we can reach out to share a meal. We reach across religious divides, socioeconomic divides, value divides, educational divides, and any other divide to meet our neighbor. We ask about their hearts, about their stories, about their journeys. About what has shaped them, about what feels hard. About their dreams and their fears. I’d bet, at the end of the day, we would find more things in common than we would ever guess.

4. We reach out to our representatives to encourage them or to call them out, to tell them we care. As a small example, a top Texas government official equated gang members with “trash” last week in his words, and I contacted his office to say that this mattered to me. Did it make a difference? Of course - our actions always make a difference, for ourselves or for them. If silence benefits injustice, we will not be silent here. Here is a resource for contacting your government officials: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

5. We pray. We lament. We seek God’s face. We will always find what we are looking for - and so we look for Jesus everywhere, knowing the gospel story permeates every part of history, every part of our world. We tell salvation stories, and we praise in the dark. We give the glory to God - we give our fears and worries to God too. We find comfort in His sure foundation, and we find strength here too. We have been given a spirit of power, and of love, and of self-discipline, and we trust in God to be good. We pray for our hearts; we pray for our world.

And so, here we are: in 2019, in our own spaces and places, shaping history. May we do so in a way that echoes the cry, “Lord, may your kingdom come.” May we welcome and encourage and press in. May we love. Happy Saturday!