A Tale of Three Kings – A Study in Brokenness

A Tale of Three Kings: A Study in Brokenness by storyteller, pastor and evangelist Gene Edwards’ is a little book.

Separate recommendations: Chuck Swindoll (chancellor DTS) and Prof. Duffy Robins. Youth ministry consultant.

Not about the outward things of impression, but about the inward things of our hearts.

Hard being a Christian? Especially responding as a Christian? What I’m sharing tonight will help.

Hoping this message will help 1 or 2 of you tonight; seeds for others of you.

Saul, with little doubt, was a great leader—everything people today are seeking to be… but, despite Saul’s leadership prowess, God rejected him.

PART ONE – Saul and David (back story of 1 Samuel 18-31)

Two kings: the Lord’s anointed, Saul, who the Lord rejects, and the Lord’s newly anointed, David, who must suffer a mad king (Saul), who throws spears, until the Lord is ready to install David to the throne.

David is anointed with oil by Samuel, and the king-elect gradually grows in stature, but, and this is important:

“his [anointing] led the young man not to the throne but to a decade of hellish agony and suffering… On that day, David was enrolled, not into the lineage of royalty, but into the school of brokenness.” (p. 8)

David was set to learn many indispensable lessons about spear throwing, of all things, from an insane king… Saul.  David’s life was about to get painful.

David served the mad king, and the better David did, the more jealous the king grew.  Saul terrorises David.  Saul: haunted by thought he’s replaced. Saul is insanely jealous, paranoid, suspicious, raving, angry.

We talk in terms of bullying… Saul is the king of bullies to David.

David knew he was now the Lord’s anointed, so we must ask, when Saul threw spears, why didn’t David throw them back? 

David began to understand, that, in not throwing the spears back, God got what God wanted… the book says:

“God did not have — but wanted very much to have — men and women who would live in pain… God wanted a broken vessel.” (p. 12)

... again from the book

“God has a university.  It’s a small school. 
Few enrol; even fewer graduate. 
Very, very few indeed.” (p. 15)

“… all students in this school must suffer much pain.  And as you might guess, it is often the unbroken ruler (Saul, in David’s case) (who God sovereignly picks) who dispenses the pain.” (p. 15)

“As the king grew in madness, David grew in understanding,” as if sanctified by what he suffered.  David chose to submit under an oblivion of lunacy, and thereby, in his brokenness, spiralled down into a deeper hell.

So David was perplexed… what am I to do when these spears whistle past my head?  Of course, any man or woman’s logic is to grab that thrown spear and throw it right back where it came from… an eye for an eye.

After all, David, you’re a warrior!  Are you chicken?  Goaded by men and by conscience, there did seem something amiss in his logic — to avenge the attack is to avenge one’s kingship.

Yet, David would not throw those spears back.  He was not a king after the order of Saul.  David had learned something absurdly counterintuitive; it is always better to pretend the spears didn’t even exist… and if they did hit, it doesn’t matter, even if they pierce your heart.

Now to change tack: we have to ask ourselves, continually and constantly, if we’re the Lord’s anointed… and, if so, are we after the order of King Saul.  If we are, we’re destined to miss the mark. 

“Am I someone who fights for my own justice?”  “Am I a spear thrower?”  “Do I retaliate?”

Something that pierces worse than Saul’s spear, however, is the searching eye of the Lord, from which nothing is hidden: Saul, he is in you and I!  And there’s nothing we can do about it unless we’re inculcated in the same curriculum as David was.

In that broken place, with spear wounds all over, we must leave the battlefield with not a single friend.  We must leave alone.  David fled Saul more than once.  He always left alone… it’s the only way to leave.

We leave that kingdom without defence… not one spear thrown… wounded… to enter the cave… a very inhospitable place… where we’re inclined to enter a season of bitter pity… pities given to God, in psalms of lament… psalms like 5, 59, 22, 64, 142.  We pour out our hearts to God… and to trusted others.

In our context, when we have the hearts of King Saul, we don’t leave alone; we leave with a posse.  Many churches have been destroyed through splits because the person who decided to leave retaliated… others in tow.

Not David.

For David it was preferable that Saul kill him than for him to learn Saul’s mad ways.  Page 36 has David saying, “I shall not practice the ways that cause kings to go mad.”  See the link between spear throwing and madness?

In David’s darkest hours, as if labour pains of suffering birthed in him humility only possible from brokenness, through being shattered, again and again, he led a band of hoodlums to sobriety.  Nobodies became better people through a peculiar type of leadership.

“David did not lead them,” but they were led by him, alright!  They were amazed, as are we, that true kingship comes when nothing is forced; when the leader submits to violence and allows what God will sovereignly allow.

David, the Lord’s anointed, has no defence.  He insists, there will be no defence!  He insists!!  Sounds crazy.  He trusts God.

Yes, God gives the unruly and the unworthy his power. 
IMPORTANT LESSON!!

“He sometimes gives unworthy vessels a greater portion of power so that others will eventually see the true state of internal nakedness in that individual.” (p. 41)  Spear throwers: not clothed in God’s love within. They appear naked where they should appear clothed in compassion.

In the fact of wicked leadership all are able to see that God is poorly represented.  Selfish leaders are highly conspicuous.

But, remember Saul. Remember where he is… He is in each of us!  We think we’re Davids.  But, in fact, unless we act as David acted, and the vast majority of the time we don’t, we are kings after the order of Saul.

See, David never minded if he was about to be dethroned. 

David had authority, but in that very fact, that fact didn’t ever occur to him.  He who had all power, acted as if he had none.

That’s what the school of brokenness taught David: if you don’t attack from a position of weakness, when you have strength, power is nothing to misuse. David learned a lot in the cave… the King Saul type crushed out of his heart.

Power is the greatest thing abused in this world.

Remember, Saul — he’s in me and you.  We’re kings after his order if we flunk God’s school of brokenness.  It’s our biggest test.

But we’re only halfway through the story…

PART TWO – David and Absalom (story behind 2 Samuel 15-18)

Two kings are profiled: the king in residence, David, who is about to be overthrown, and Absalom, the king-elect in the fashion of his own making.

The reverse of the situation of part one takes place in part two. 

Absalom is usurping the kingship.  Will David treat Absalom like Saul treated David?  And, if so, will Absalom respond in the same way as David did to Saul’s treatment?

In a man who seemed noble and pure, Absalom, a “rebellion was ignited.” (p. 60)

Absalom had the numbers, the ascendency, the favour of the people.

Joab was sought and he and David pondered the imminent rebellion.

Was David to mount a defence?  He only had his experience of youth to draw on.  “What course [of action] was that?” asked Joab. 
“To do absolutely nothing,” replied the king. (p. 68)  Wow.

Alone.                     When you’re about to be overthrown, you’re alone.    Sauls fight that feeling… and retaliate… not Davids… they’re brave enough and broken enough to be still and resist retaliating even if that’s what they’re tempted to do.

David ponders, this time with Abishai: “Shall I be a Saul to Absalom?” to which was the reply: “He has been no young David to you.” (p. 70)

Absalom has minor grievances with David, whereas David had major grievances with Saul.  David had never been unfair to Absalom.  Yet David was losing a kingdom.

David refused to learn the ways of Saul, a second time,
given a second temptation. He refused to unlearn the ways of brokenness he learned with Saul.

Absalom, on the other hand, promised to make a splendid Saul.  He was already a Saul, for he had no understanding of the wisdom extant in David’s brokenness.  In Absalom, rebellion had been dormant in his heart for years.  He seemed so faithful until he wasn’t.

“The motives of the heart will eventually be revealed.
God will see to it.” (p. 86)

Then David reflected over Moses: “At the age of forty, Moses was an arrogant, self-willed man…  What he might have done at forty, I cannot say.  At eighty, he was a broken man.  He was…

“The meekest man who ever lived… [whoever] carries the rod of God’s authority should be.” (p. 87)  David said that.  And Moses had an Absalom in the person of Korah and his 250 followers (Numbers 16).

Absalom claims the kingdom!

David said, “The throne is not mine.  Not to have, not to take, not to protect, and not to keep.” (p. 94)

The book finishes saying, “the true king turned and walked quietly out of the throne room, out of the palace, out of the city.  He walked and he walked…

“Into the bosoms of all men whose hearts are pure.”

Now to Jesus:

Jesus never threw spears.  Much like His ancestor, David, He never even contemplated it. 

On the Mount of Olives, Jesus taught about it.

At Gethsemane, Jesus lived it.  Jesus never threw spears.

Now, this is a Christmas message… the Father gave us His Son, born Incarnate of God; an unconditional offer of reconciliation… that required of Jesus, brokenness… against a humanity that so often rejects His love.

God’s school of brokenness is hard to graduate from, because none of us like submission when we’ve been betrayed.  This school is a sacred school. 
It is a school in the line of David.  It is a school in the line of Jesus.

God used Saul in David’s life.  God used Absalom in David’s life.  David would have hated it, but God used it…  Just like God used the Pharisees, Herod and Pilate in Jesus’ life. 

Consider Paul’s words from 2 Corinthians 12:7 and following:

“… in order to keep me from becoming conceited, proud and arrogant, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, a devilish prod, a teasing goad, to torment me. ⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord, I begged Him, to take it away from me; to relieve me of it. 

⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, it is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness… my power begins when yours ends!” when you stop fighting and stop retaliating…

“Therefore—in my flesh I cannot say this—I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, I, Paul, for Christ’s sake… I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.

“For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

2 Corinthians 12:8-10.

Indeed, more than once Paul said words like:

“When we are reviled, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we respond graciously.”
— 1 Corinthians 4:12b-13a (HCSB)

God uses the things that would normally make us conceited, and He uses them to produce in us humility, often through bearing humiliation.

4 points to make:

1.              The Insult of Brokenness borne brings in the Ingress of Blessing

Brokenness is a state.

Brokenness is a state of being, blessed from heaven exacted below, throbbing in pain, yet purposed for growth, as brokenness is from God.

Brokenness of being is a state of place in this world, of acceptance, here, so something abundantly better is being forged for later, and certainly in eternity.

Bear the insult of brokenness which brings the ingress of blessing.

2.             Brokenness is only learned when it’s practiced

“There was a time in my life when I would fight and work hard at vindicating myself, [but] through a process of years and the dregs of painful experiences, I have learned that I’m unqualified to do that, furthermore I do not learn when I’m busy about defending myself.  It also distracts me from my calling, which is all part of the enemy’s plan.” 

— Charles R. Swindoll

But, of course, it’s easy to forget all that when there are spears coming your way.

The sentiment of Psalm 37:5-6.

“Commit your way to the Lord;

trust in him, and he will act.

He will make your vindication shine like the light,

and the justice of your cause like the noonday.” 

— Psalm 37:5-6 (NRSV)

We have to learn to stop fighting and defending ourselves.

We have to pray, “Vengeance is Yours, Lord,” (Deut. 35/Romans 12).

God loves us all, but He can use the broken, and, because the broken give Him glory, because His glory is visible through brokenness.

We only learn the value of brokenness—to God—when we practice it.

3.             Brokenness is like a Graduate School
Brokenness is the Hardest Thing to Learn

“… solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”

— Hebrews 5:14 (NIV)

Brokenness is solid food. When James said, “Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds” he was referring to being in Graduate School.

It’s for those Christians who have already attained their Bachelors degree in the faith—those who know all their theology, who have the right foundation, and who believe in Jesus beyond any doubt.

Brokenness is a Graduate training—it’s a Master’s degree.  God is removing from us every crutch… every reliance apart from Him.

4.             In Our Brokenness and Trust, God’s Sovereignty and Compassion are Made Known

Experiences of momentary brokenness, where we have nothing left to hold from God, where our lives are held open in perfect submission, draw to us the golden experience of compassion only possible in the heart of God’s Presence.

As soon as we’re able to trust God’s sovereignty, wholly and absolutely, we are a testimony of restoration. 

See how God’s sovereignty takes us from brokenness to restoration in a single moment?  Ah… that’s the Abundant Life.

When we trust God, because we believe in His sovereignty, we trust our brokenness to Him, and then we experience God’s compassion.

Review Questions:

·      God’s prophet had anointed David when he was a boy, but for years David saw only hardship and danger. How can a person remain faithful between the promise and the payoff? What might make it difficult to remain faithful even after the payoff has arrived?

·      Are you clinging to God’s promises or to God Himself?  What is the distinction (if any)?

·      In this story, David considered the throne to be God’s, not his own to have, to take, to protect, to keep. He asserted that he desired God’s will more than God’s blessing. Could you say the same about what God has given you? How would you respond if your job, your home, your family were all taken from you?

Let’s Pray:

Thank You, Lord, that You    are the Exemplar of Brokenness; that You show us, even through the life of David, that there is no Kingdom point in spear throwing.

Thank You that, through Your Spirit, we have Your power; Your strength in our weakness, and Your grace     through eternity.

Help us to know how to avoid being hit by spears that would turn us a deep shade of bitter, and, as per David’s example, help us to never     let a spear touch us, even if the spear thrown were to pierce our hearts.

I pray for each one here, in their broken situations both now and coming, that You’d empower them by their cognisance of these truths we’ve pondered tonight. AMEN.

The Everyday Relevance of the Wounded Healer’s Ministry

“For all ministers are called to recognize the sufferings of their time in their own hearts, and make to that recognition the starting point of their service.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932–1996)

Through four open doors does Nouwen invite the minister, in exploring their own intrinsic contribution, as a putty to be moulded, through the hands of God’s Spirit, for the healing of others, not in spite of, but because of their own wounds.

The wounded healer has experienced God’s healing their own wounds, and through that experience they help. Theirs is the embodiment of presence, as in the Presence of God. The experience of healing transforms, not simply for the moment, but forever.

Although Nouwen wrote The Wounded Healer in 1972, as postmodernism was starting, it has stark relevance in this age, perhaps more so.

1.     Ministry in a Dislocated World

Perhaps it is the case that since the industrial revolution began there has been dislocation on a common scale. People feel estranged from safety because family structures and familiarity have been devastated. It’s like we’re in a second fall. As a society, we’ve chosen to taste that apple; to depart from a simple reliance on the land.

Such a quest for knowledge means we run exhausted into the inexhaustible futility of our existence, because somehow, we’ve lost touch with the God of hope and meaning.

It’s strange that what is typical of living in a dislocated world is not despair, but a lack of hope. Something is missing that we feel should be there. Our quest for enlightenment means we’re “caught in the prison of our own mortality.” (p. 19)

Ministry in this dislocated world context comes out of the knowledge that knowledge is not enough, and indeed takes us in the wrong direction. There is unity and spiritual progress is wonder and exploration, in breaking past a legalistic faith and regimented thinking.

2.    Ministry for the Rootless Generations

It’s not just today’s youth that may appear rootless; that consternation has been experienced by youth for some generations now. It’s a fact that should, in the wounded healer, unify us. It’s an opportunity for the older wounded healer to connect with those looking for direction. It’s a prospect for the younger wounded healer to relate with their frail and elderly.

As we gaze into the eyes of those we meet, what do we find? Resignation, hope, despair, vision? Chances are it’s a different thing we’ll see.

Chances are the people we’ll encounter in ministry have an inwardness that is difficult to connect with, a fatherlessness that stems from the breakdown of the family unit, and a destructive convulsiveness that emanates from a lack of inherent vision. It is only as we connect with these lacks within ourselves, and promise to minister through what God changes in us as we accept these facts, that we can help ameliorate these conundrums in others.

The wounded healer is not at war with the modern constraints placed on them in their ministry. They absorb the constraints and become them. They use the very constraints that seem there only to frustrate and they create space for articulation. They teach others how to name their inner events.

The pastoral conversation, then, is about risking; articulating the truth so that people can experience clarity, which in turn delivers hope.

Where pastors have authority, compassion must become “the core, and the nature,” of that authority. “For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.” (p. 45) Compassionate persons offer and allow space for human experience, and the free expression of those experiences, with validation and encouragement, for surely it’s inspiring when human experience can be vocalised and reflected upon, where meaning can be made. It’s the compassionate person who has reconciled their own bitterness, and who may therefore open the doors of others’ narrow-mindedness. Never through telling, but by incarnational example.

Prayer underpins the person in whom God dwells constantly. And such a person is able to, as a contemplative analyst, render to persons who are willing, the spiritual therapies of God — those that are known by the help made manifest in that person by their own assessment.

3.    Ministry to Hopeless Persons

… not that they are hopeless at all, but their perception is of hopelessness.

Leadership, according to Nouwen, is “the encounter between two people.” (p. 55) In the interaction of John Allen, the theology student, with Mr. Harrison, the dying patient, Nouwen shows us that it’s only when we enter the paradox that we are effective at all in this mysterious of all practices: ministry.

The way out of pain into the gorgeousness of healing, for the leader, is also the way back in… “only by entering into communion with human suffering can relief be found.” (p. 83) In this is found the point of hopelessness; that suffering and struggle provide the very impetus to healing.

If there were no grating, excruciating rock bottom there’d be no highway into the vistas of the beautiful unknowns ahead.

4.    Ministry by a Lonely Minister

Instead of denying or neglecting our loneliness, Nouwen commends us to accept it, for whatever pain is embraced is also redeemable in the untold blessings of God.

A minister is no help to others in spiritual exhibitionism (“Oh, I have the same problem; let me tell you about it”) because they lead the person to perhaps the same narrow-minded acceptance of what cannot be transformed into something creative. But a minister who has ventured intrepidly and painfully into their loneliness has sought God in that place, and in that deeper milieu they’ve heard God whisper inaudibly into the soul of their spirit. Such a minister can help, because they open a door for another to step into; that doorway leads to a new path of awakening by the Spirit of God, and God’s actual Presence is learned there in a way no other way works. To such an experience the lonely minister is conversant. They use no other way, for why would we entertain revelry when the true way beckons? The use of loneliness is as essential for healing as oxygen is for breathing.

The Liberator does not promise to lift us out of the doldrums. Instead He sits there with us, with the poor, the feeble, the maimed, and helps us wrap our own wounds. In that, and in not being lifted out of the conundrums of our lives, is healing.

Healing comes not from running from our loneliness, but in making a home for it.

Quotations from The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society.

Living Thankfully Within the Theatre of Life

“If experience is about wealth, then I’m a very wealthy person.”

— Dr Gregory Smith (former sociopath)

As I sat there watching the Year 4 students as they were led through a drama class, the teacher taught them an element of drama that I never before knew. Drama revolves around a problem — if there’s no problem then there’s no story, no narrative, nothing stimulating to pique the onlooker’s interest.

Dr Gregory Smith is an incredibly interesting person. His story, here. Someone who grew up in the dramatic horrors of domestic violence, was orphaned, convicted of arson but relieved of the burden of paying for that crime due to reasons of temporary insanity; who lived in a forest for ten years. Finally, in his late forties he came upon an epiphany. He learned something that turned his world upside down (as if he hadn’t already lived an upside down life).

Smith learned that his extreme antisocial patterns of behaviour were due to the fact he had been fighting himself all along. He was central to his own problems.

That spoke to me. It reminded me of an epiphany I had of the Lord on July 7, 2015.

Having learned this powerfully fundamental and paradoxical truth — that when we admit we’re the problem only then are we free to provide our own solutions — Smith was finally able to commence the wrestle of reconciling the drama of his astonishingly theatrical life.

When we finally discover that problems are inherently part of the theatre that life is, we’re positioned to transcend our problems through the provision of solutions, which could not come otherwise.

The theatre of life is only interesting, and only evokes passion, when we have problems to overcome. See how problems are principally part of God’s plan?

Accept that problems are part of life and, with passion, prime yourself for adventure.

When we take this approach, thankfulness informs our narrative, gratitude emerges, and, as persons, we thrive.

The Long Journey Back to Gratitude

“Nothing taken for granted,

Everything received with gratitude,

Everything passed on with grace.”

— G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936)

At the end of a long year (and I’m not one to think of all years as ‘long’) I’ve been left with the recurring feeling that I’m missing something. That something is gratitude. Not saying this applies to everyone, though it could be applicable to anyone.

You see, not unlike many others, I’ve probably got reason to wonder when life will work out. I know I have many reasons to be grateful — certainly too many to count — but gratitude, as a disposition of character, I’ve found, is not as simple as that.

Sometimes the more we know we ought to be grateful the harder gratitude is, because of the awkward relationship we have with guilt. We know we’re blessed beyond measure, but that knowledge doesn’t shift the deep-seated subjective experience with which we must navigate. Something deeper in our soul is upset, and without attending to that first, sustained gratitude seems impossible.

When we’re on that long journey back to gratitude — knowing we ought to be grateful, but have some way to travel to get there — it’s no good feeling guilty. Guilt doesn’t help. It’s a boomerang back into complaint, because we are, of a sense, complaining about ourselves. It might seem right, but it doesn’t help.

Instead, we need to be gentle with ourselves. Of an order, we’ve already identified with the need to repent — to change our minds, as impetus for a change in behaviour. We’ve recognised where we’re at, and where we would rather be. We know what would honour God, as much as knowing where we’re falling short.

There is no condemnation for those who are on their way back to that halcyon of places: gratitude.

Knowing that being in that happy place, in spite of anything that happens to us, will deliver much, not only as God-worship, but specifically as a worship that converts into service, which is love, which converts to joy, which sustains our gratitude, even to the overflowing of our cups.

We enter gratitude in a sustained way when we give equal credence to how we really feel along with intentionally choosing joy.

Where the Chesterton quote fits in the present discussion is how life is received, overall — i.e. with gratitude. When we challenge every assumption, and completely overhaul every expectation, we stop taking things for granted. Barriers to indifferent perception are removed. Then we may receive everything with an openly grateful disposition of spirit.

Gratitude is a disposition of spirit. It’s nothing tried or perfected. It’s nothing if not a product of the joyful spirituality of simplicity. Nothing needed to be added to us.

When we arrive at gratitude we’re then poised to pass everything on with grace.

One thing, this thing, God will bless: the ardent endeavour to traverse the entire journey to the daily destination of gratitude.

The determination to arrive at the daily destination of gratitude is piqued most of all through enduring a hard season where complaint always fell short of something better.

Great is our direction when we’re directed toward gratitude and the way there is via joy.

God is Working Here!

I saw it on my morning walk, in a bird drying itself on a rock on a bank of the Canning River. I felt it in my spirit as God ministered in the silence between a dear friend who’s suffering and I. I have, at times, sensed there was a pervading and veritable darkness that hovered because of a perceived lack of it. But I heard it, too, as I conversed with another dear ministry friend as he shared with me how he has seen God working in his midst, in ways he wouldn’t have seen had bad things not happened.

God is working here, wherever ‘here’ may ever be.

God provided the air, heat and evaporation for the bird to be dried. He worked in the silence in a situation only silence can reconcile. He works to resurrect our perception of His Presence. He works behind the scenes of our awareness, so, through our faith, His Presence is piqued upon our awareness.

God is working even, and especially even, when we don’t or can’t notice it; when we’re blind to the goodness and faithfulness of Him who does little things that are never insignificant.

The interesting thing is the confluence between the faithfulness of God and our obedience in those moments when we can be as Jesus was; to do that by His Spirit.

In the gospel economy, the more we lose the more we gain. And this is particularly where we most see God working.

Where we see God is present even when things go wrong, we especially believe upon hope, waiting expectantly for His Presence to shine. We’re prepared and ready, and we don’t readily lose that hope.

God is working here, wherever our here is, eternally, active now, in the past, for the future, always, whether we notice Him working or not.

Nothing can ever or will ever change this fact. God was working before creation, and will be working after His physical creation is consumed.

There’s something incredibly encouraging in knowing God’s working in the midst of the nothingness of our lives.

Signs of These Tumultuous Times

Is it just me or is there a divided world emerging? We probably all know it’s always been there. But with the advent of society’s problem with and reaction to political correctness gone too far, the divisions are emerging everywhere and they’re affecting lives — separating good friends, for instance, because the sharp malalignment of even one passionately felt issue disintegrates their affection.

Could it be that such vitriolic expressions of extremities of thought, once aired, which can never be taken back, and would by their owners never be retracted, work in the favour of an invisible enemy?

Name the issue. Trump. Same-sex marriage. Indigenous issues. Refugees, their migration and acceptance (or not) into a foreign country. The unfair coupling of ISIS and people of Muslim faith. Anti-Semitism and Philo-Semitism. Truly the list goes on and on.

I think we’re on the cusp of something terrifying. The world needs God more than ever, so as individuals we can take due responsibility as citizens with equal stake in the community of earth.

We all have our innate and developed biases. But faith in God moderates these biases so we can truly understand where they come from — they almost always emanate from our brokenness. If we’re to be part of building something good instead of destroying it (and some of our relationships) along the way, we must come together and learn to appreciate our differences of foundation, formation and opinion.

***

A divided world emerging. It’s everywhere. Trump. Same-sex marriage. Indigenous issues. Refugees. Such extremities of opinion. WW3 coming?