Stopping to Think

As a preface: I had started this post on Friday. I halted it for a couple of reasons. I won't go into all of them, although the most important one I will. I believe of cycle of 24 hour news, with all the latest information available immediately on the internet is wonderful for gossip, and absolutely terrible for meaningful reflection on anything, but most especially tragedy. I woul venture to guess that most of you reading this felt shock, horror, outrage, or some other emotion of a particularily violent force when you turned on your TV/computer/radio Friday morning. I would also think it safe to assme that as coverage has slowly waned, so has emotion. To some extent this cannot be helped, things that are fresh in our minds are always going to be what bring forth the deepest emotions and reactions. But I fear the we are so overwhelmed with information that when something truly of weight like this happens, we are quick to forget, turn the page, and go do something different. And so ...

“Honor all people.  Love the brotherhood.  Fear God.  Honor the king.”  1 Peter 2:17 I love that verse.  It’s in the middle of a section where Peter deals a lot with submission.  Submission to government, submission to masters, submission of wives to their husbands, and so on.  And I love this verse because in 11 words we’re told basically what we need to know in order to live our lives in a godly way. “Honor all people.”  Do we do that?  No.  We judge people for the simple fact that they are different than us.  We condemn people because of their outward appearances.  We call people -who God created- ugly; or refer to them as a “waste of air.”  Really?  Is that congruent with how the Bible would speak of us?  Genesis 1:26-27 talks about God doing what?  Making man in His own image.  And in verse 31 He refers to that as “very good.”  Interesting.  God has declared that man being made in His...