Life is Better Than This

Putting faith in my Savior, trusting in the knowledge and sense of caring that He has given me: that makes sense to me. Knowing what items I want to caringly place in a package that I'm prayerful and hopeful about: that makes sense to me. Sending care to loved ones who may be looking forward to a healing while at a hospital: that makes sense to me. Giving cool, soothing, low-sugar popcicles that include a little calcium, iron, and other nutrients when that's a dire need, makes sense to me.

But men and young people hurling rockets at Israel, and Israel attempting to expel Arab neighbors — even attacking a mosque: that doesn't make sense to me.

It's dumbfounding to me.

Yet these are days that Jesus talked about, that Jesus prophesied or said would happen. It's seemingly a time approaching the kind of lawlessness Jesus said there would be, with more than a few children sacrified to through senseless gunfire; with women like Aniah Blanchard, Vanessa Guillen, and Breonna Taylor missing from family life all too soon; with the silent epidemic of #MeToo being all too real; and with a certain TV commercial featuring Ron Reagan — and a prominent magazine cover faithlessly touting black pride — on this decade's public stage, there's a stifling sacrilegiousness encompassing many of our lives.

But then there's the voice of Jesus, saying to endure. "Because of lawlessness, the hearts of many will grow cold," He says. "But the one who endures to the end, the same shall be saved."

Far too many loved ones are leaving, passing away, worldwide. And it's not a help that there is a growing culture of tense standoffs between that part of Europe that historically depicted the Lord, our Savior, as having been white as snow when He walked in earth, and those parts of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Caribbean that, in some ways, are becoming defiant to belief.

Who are we to question why people of deep color didn't remain among ancient Israelites? And who are we to question why Heaven would allow some of Europe to grow richly in faith while painting Jesus in ways that weren't quite physically true?

"Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of workers of iniquity," the Bible says. Don't envy those who believe and do wrongly, the word says more than once.

We live in a backslidden world, but backslidding ways aren't what anyone needs. Evil for evil isn't what anyone needs. And we don't need evil for the good in our hearts.

The love of Jesus isn't anything anyone can provoke or command through backslidding or violence. The love of Jesus simply is.


***

Maybe, one day, we'll get back to meaningful living. Maybe, one day, people such as me, will be able to answer a call of heart, to carry homemade cookies and maybe ice cream on a mission trip — without the least threat, on anyone's part, of any backslidding, nor any threat of dying.


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