Time Out: Weekly quiet times for the youth worker’s soul.
by Adam Wormann

Well, Gadhafi has been killed. It’s always interesting to watch the reactions of people when news like this happens. I saw this on the Facebook wall of someone I know, and was kind of bothered by it:

“Ha Gadhafi is dead! Enjoy your 75 virgins. Don’t lose your head over it.”

I understand relief and rejoicing in the sense that justice has been done. There’s a point, though, where gloating over someone’s death seems somewhat un-Christlike. The point here isn’t the person that said that, it’s a call for all of us to examine our hearts and how we react.

In Matthew 5, Jesus talks about how we are to treat people, especially those who have wronged you. We are to go the extra mile to show others love and mercy. I don’t think that Jesus is saying we eliminate justice, but that we need to watch our hearts in the matter. Honestly, we deal with that every day.

Take this situation down a handful of levels. Let’s be honest, we all have people in our church and students in our ministry that wind up making our life difficult. Sometimes this is intentional, sometimes it’s unintentional. The truth is, other people drive us nuts. When this happens, it’s easy to ignore, marginalize, or otherwise treat someone as an “enemy.” That’s not what Christ calls us to. We are to go the extra mile for those people. We need to not only treat them with love and respect, but pray for them (and not just for them to change to our liking), help them, and care for them. Our love ought to take action, and that can be one of the hardest things to do. We feel justified in our feelings and don’t like to change that. Christ calls us to something bigger.

Take an inventory of the people in your world. Who is it that you have a really hard time with? Think about what you can do for them. How can you serve them? How does your heart need to change towards them?

Whether big or small, we need to stop looking at others as the enemy, but as someone whom God made in his image.

Posted on October 24, 2011