"I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” –– Psalm 27:13-14
Some days I wonder. Will we, really? Some days the goodness of the Lord seems drowned by wave after wave of the habitual human infliction of needless pain and suffering upon one another. Hate has a heyday whenever we become so anesthetized to the plight of those who suffer that we inflate our inconveniences to the status of injustice. If we don’t wince at the latest casualty count in Gaza, or weep for the child bullied into suicide, but are outraged by slow service at a restaurant, we have lost our way. When will we see the goodness of the Lord? Where will we see the goodness of the Lord? Not in the grandstanding of the congressional hearing. Not in the public official who denies saying what he was clearly recorded saying the day before. Not in the celebrity ego drama that supplants any word about the ongoing anguish in Ukraine, Haiti, or Sudan at the top of the evening news. Not in the hostile rhetoric that has become normalized in these insufferable culture wars.
The cynic has plenty of evidence to claim the emptiness of our Christian platitudes. Yet, that is not new. There has always been a disconnect between the love we proclaim to honor and the animosities we continue to harbor. So, when shall we see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living? When will we accept that any reforms we desire cannot begin without our own reformation? When will we pray it and mean it –– Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace? When? When pride in our religion is supplanted by an authenticity in our humility before God. When we acknowledge our complicity in the evils that threaten us. When, looking to Christ, on whom we depend, and starting right where we are, we look for the good in our neighbor, and seek the welfare of our neighbor. When, at the beginning of the day, we pray that by the end of the day, we will have been bearers of grace to all we meet. Start local and go global.
It is easy to lament the nearness of gloom clouds, but it is a calling to participate in the good we can still see, and trust that God can equip us to make it grow. “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
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