Hope in the Brokenness

There is a great deal of hurt and brokenness going on in the world.  I'm reminded of that with ugliness going on around us.  Ferguson, MO is struggling, to say the least, with peace in its community.  There are ugly things happening and being said there concerning race issues we thought or wished were long gone from our country.  The ISIS threatens peace everywhere.  We are scared and searching for the ways to deal with terrorist.  We're not even sure we CAN deal with terrorist.  The NFL, the world's most popular sports league, is dealing with the backlash of how poorly it handled an incident of abuse from one of its marquee players on his then fiancee.  The video of Ray Rice seen 'round the globe has opened our eyes to the ugly world of domestic violence.  The situation with Ray Rice has shed a dark shadow on even our justice system.  Prosecutors and the judge HAD SEEN the video that rocked our world this week, and they still accepted Rice into a pre-trial intervention program that will eventually lead to the assault charge being dismissed from his record.  We're learning that our justice system sometimes doesn't bring justice.  And just this week, in a story that hit close to my heart, police and the FBI arrested a man that lives in the small town in South Carolina where my brother and his family live.  The man had killed his five children, driven them to Alabama, and dumped their bodies off a dirt road.  A man capable of killing his own five innocent children was living minutes away from my two nephews.

I'm not in the politics business, so I stay away from politics.  There are a lot of politics surrounding the situations in Ferguson, the ISIS, and Ray Rice.  There will be politics in the trial of this man in South Carolina.  Politics are complicated.  And they don't fully work.  Our world doesn't need more political maneuvering.  Our world needs healing.  Because it is broken.  This is the truth from the Bible that so many miss.  We point to the beautiful things about life that point to how the world really is.  That's not quite right.  The beauty we see or experience points to how things could be.  They are a 'foretaste of glory divine.'

Politics, policies, legislation, suspensions, and boycotts don't save people.  Jesus saves people.  Our world needs saving.  Our world needs Jesus.  The problem is that getting Jesus to the world is complicated.  You won't get a chance to meet Ray Rice.  You're probably not looking to meet someone from the ISIS.  You probably don't have a vacation scheduled to Ferguson, and I don't think a revival in Ferguson is the answer.

The answer is you and me.  The answer is teaching our sons how to honor all people (including women) because the Bible tells us to honor others above ourselves.  The answer is to treat our co-workers and neighbors as children of the Most High God, made in His image, instead of according to our differing skin colors.  The answer is in praying for our enemies because Jesus told us to pray for those that curse you.  The answer is loving our neighbor as ourselves, instead of ignoring their drug and alcohol abuse, before they do something horrific in a substance-induced rage.  The answer is in being Jesus for a broken world, one person at a time.  The answer is in showing others another way of life, a new world, a Kingdom in which love of God and love of neighbor reign supreme.