The Bible tells us that our eyes are like lamps that bring light into our bodies. The health of our eyes will determine if our bodies are healthy, filled with light…or unhealthy, filled with darkness. I’ve been pondering this a great deal lately. Without delving into politics, I will say we are being given many opportunities to practice this noble and wise scripture this week. I knew in my heart that the events of Tuesday were liable to serve as a key to open the floodgates of angry and hateful rhetoric.
There are people who planned hateful things on Tuesday. I kept hearing rumors of it, never dreaming it would come to my doorstep. Then I received a private message on my Facebook page by some man I did not know. Usually those are fairly innocuous pleas to make them the happiest man in the world and send them a friend request. Yeah…that’s a hard pass, fella. You’d have to get up pretty early to pull one over on me.
This message was different. My profile picture for the month of June is a series of colorful stripes with the word ALLY across it…in support of my daughter and her wife and my countless friends who are members of the LGBTQ+ community. The message I received was hate filled with ugly, vulgar terms to describe who I am for displaying such a thing. My first thought was shock. I surely wasn’t expecting something like that. Then I was angry and frustrated because this is what my beautiful daughter and daughter-in-law face on the daily.
Then I felt pity. Pity that people feel they need to treat others with such hatred and ugliness. Pity that he obviously doesn’t know Jesus. The Biblical Jesus that I know. I knew his eyes must be unhealthy because he had such darkness in him. I wish he knew how much Jesus loves him and how much better his life could be if only he would find Him. I’m witness to know the incredible difference a life walking with God makes. I prayed for his salvation, then I blocked him and reported the attack to Facebook. I did not engage him because that’s what people like this want. Reaction. I failed to give him that.
Tuesday night, Daughter #2 called to wish me a happy birthday. She wanted to know all about my day and when I asked her about hers, she said it was great…right up to the very last minute before closing. She received a phone call at work from a man that sounded pleasant enough. He asked if they carried a certain product. She said they did. He went on to tell her why he needed it and the thought maybe he was oversharing a little bit so she just made a pleasant comment about how glad she was it helped. Then he said, “Well enough about that. Let’s talk about the f.i.n.a.l s.o.l.u.t.i.o.n. There’s J.E.W.S out there, you know!” (For those of you who do not know what that is, it’s what the N.a.z.i.s called the H.o.l.o.c.a.u.s.t.) I am writing this with p.e.r.i.o.d.s between the letters of certain words to keep from drawing the attention of nefarious people.
Now, you have to understand…my daughter grew up J.e.w.i.s.h in a small community in Colorado. She was bullied all through school because of her religious identity. As a matter of fact, it was so bad it caused her to self-harm and nearly drove her to s.u.i.c.i.d.e. So when this guy called and laid that on HER doorstep, she didn’t miss a beat and lit into him with the same mouth I used to kiss good night when she was little. She is fierce and stands up to people. Unfortunately, in this day and age, that can be outright dangerous and as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew she had given him exactly what he wanted.
I’m not telling you this to stir things up. I won’t engage in debates over things such as this. I’ll do all the things I can to combat hatred in all forms. And I’ll pray fiercely in hopes that we can somehow normalize kindness and love our neighbors again. We cannot hide our heads in the sand and think this kind of thing isn’t happening everywhere. But we CAN choose wisely what we let into our eyes and make a conscious effort to feed the light.
There are two animals within us…a good one and a bad one. The one we feed is the one who survives.
❤️?
““Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. But when it is unhealthy, your body is filled with darkness. Make sure that the light you think you have is not actually darkness. If you are filled with light, with no dark corners, then your whole life will be radiant, as though a floodlight were filling you with light.””
Luke 11:34-36 NLT
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bring Peace into your garden with one of my photographs and a fitting scripture…John 14:27
