"Injustice, brokenness, and cruelty abound in our fractured world – to the point where it is easy to see how anger can become a lifestyle, outrage a default reaction. But this is where our anger putrefies and begins to poison us. When anger is tightly grasped and infected with a sense of righteousness, it turns into a monster. Once we feel justified in our anger and vengefulness, we coddle it and lovingly nurture it to maturity and beyond, at which point it's grown into the kind of monstrosity capable of unthinkable things.
… Anger can be holy and anger is human. It's a facet of our experience, our emotional make-up, that can't be denied or domesticated to make it more palatable. When we grasp it, feed it, exalt it and praise its excessive demonstration in our leaders, we disfigure ourselves and pave the way to atrocity. But if we can know our anger and honestly express it, we can be supernaturally infused with hope that reconciliation is possible and things will, in time, be right" (Making Peace With Anger, Ashley Lande).
Things will never "be right" in this life, and I know so little of the true suffering of many. But rather than simply adding to the discord of voices, today I am praying that we can begin to break the vicious cycle of anger, distrust, violence, and outright murder. That we can acknowledge the hurt, the anger, the "injustice, brokenness, and cruelty", and pave the way to honest dialogue and reconciliation, deciding not to join in the tide of so many who choose to ride the newest wave of racism and fearful blame-shifting. There is no "cure" for hatred and fearmongering; however, there is always hope.
Hope in Jesus Christ and the knowledge that He will, one day, make all things new.
Hope that forgiveness is possible even in the most devastatingly cruel situations.
Hope that we don't have to repeat the mistakes of those who have gone before us.
Hope that God is indeed greater than the deep depravity of our hearts.
Hope that love wins and will surely cover a multitude of sins.
I am nowhere close to having all of the answers. Sometimes, I read the news articles, and I just weep over all of the senseless pain and heartache. But I have a mighty God who is the Light in the darkness and who daily commends me to not grow weary of doing good. So, even in these times, I choose joy and hope. Because it's easy to hope when life runs smoothly. It's easy to hope when we have those we love around us, rather than buried in a grave. It's easy to hope when we can quickly find an answer. But when life is hard and pain runs deep – when we cannot even find words to express our sorrow and outrage over the treatment of precious souls – we realize that true hope cannot be manufactured inside our broken selves.
"I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:13, NLT).
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