So for my very first actual post I want to share a video I saw today that I found deeply moving. The current social and political landscape are framed with rhetoric, violence and pain. I feel wildly unqualified to speak to what is going on expect to repeat the words that Christ gave his closest followers “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”. Certainly if we are not actually dying for another, we can raise a voice against inequality, injustice and murder. I am also reminded of the second tradition in AA “Our leaders are but trusted servants”. As Citizens we have a solemn duty to elect officials at all levels that will uphold the values we claim to hold dear.

Ok that is enough time on the soap box for me, I will turn it over to someone long gone. A man whose voice I had never heard before today speaking to a world that was also in chaos and on the precipice of change.

If this wasn’t in black and white (and obviously a spoof of Hitler) you might think that he was speaking to America today. I find it astonishing that he plead for unity by recalling the Gospel of Luke. the verses of Luke 17:20-21 are Christ talking about his coming Kingdom. He ends his discorse with “For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”. The Apostles looked for this kingdom in their life time, their successors were convinced that it was eminent and yet here we are two thousand years later. While we abide in this world waiting should we not all strive to be conduits of that kingdom, bearing the love of God to everyone around us? What kind of world would this be if we just sit back and wait for Christs return and let it lay fallow for another two thousand years?

There is only one power available to us that effects lasting change, only one that cuts through the darkness of this world and lights a path to freedom. It is the only power I know that sufficient to kill pride, to silence the voice of self-righteousness and anger, that very power is Christ Himself. Every day we are called to take up our cross and follow Him.

This is my prayer, for myself, for anyone reading these words and for our nation, that we would all lay ourselves down and seek Him.