Lord, have mercy — What a week!

Posted on by livinggodsmission
Photo by Sarah RK on Unsplash

by Demi Prentiss

The stream of alarming news over the past week has been unrelenting:

  • Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in front of a crowd gathered at Utah Valley University.
  • Another school shooting in Colorado placed 900 high school students in lock-down, with two students critically injured and the shooter dead by his own hand.
  • The Israeli military ordered a full evacuation of Gaza City, home to about one million Palestinians.
  • Russian drones violated Polish airspace, eliciting a response from NATO forces.
  • Ukraine continues to resist Russia’s unremitting attacks, now in the fourth year of this most recent invasion, as Ukrainian civilian casualties continue to mount.
  • The French government collapsed following a no-confidence vote, ousting the prime minister.
  • Four hundred US federal agents raided a Hyundai plant in Georgia, detaining 475 workers, including hundreds of South Korean nationals.
  • US National Guard troops remain deployed in Los Angeles and Washington DC, with planned deployments in Memphis and Louisiana. Chicago, Baltimore, New York City, and Oakland, CA may also see similar deployments.
  • The nation observed the 24th anniversary of 9/11/2001, when terrorists crashed four passenger planes, demolishing our country’s illusion of invincibility.

Perhaps we have access to too many bad-news stories. Allowing even 30 minutes of news from around the world is enough to quench hope and feed despair. This week, I sought out dependable hope-bearers I’ve discovered thanks to the world wide web. Perhaps you’ll glean a bit of perspective and courage from three full-length articles that have bolstered my courage and raised my spirits. Each one, excerpted here, offers a helpful focus for action:

   “We often say that we will pray for the victims and their families, and pray we must. But our faith demands more from us. We must guard the hatred in our hearts and on our lips; it is hatred and righteous indignation that leads to violence. Jesus said plainly, ‘it is that which is on our lips and in our hearts that defiles us.’”
   “My Bishop Allan Bjornberg once said that the greatest spiritual practice … is just showing up.
   “And in some ways Mary Magdalene is like, the patron saint of just showing up.
   “Because showing up means being present to what is real, what is actually happening. She didn’t necessarily know what to say or what to do or even what to think….but none of that is nearly as important as the fact that she just showed up. She showed up at the cross where her teacher Jesus became a victim of our violence and terror. She looked on as the man who had set her free from her own darkness bore the evil and violence of the whole world upon himself and yet still she showed up.”
   “George W. Bush, who was president on that horrific day, spoke in Pennsylvania at a memorial for the passengers of the fourth flight, United Airlines Flight 93, who on September 11, 2001, stormed the cockpit and brought their airplane down in a field, killing everyone on board but denying the terrorists a fourth American trophy….
   “[W]e can take guidance from the passengers on Flight 93, who demonstrated as profoundly as it is possible to do what confronting such a mentality means. While we cannot know for certain what happened on that plane on that fateful day, investigators believe that before the passengers of Flight 93 stormed the cockpit, throwing themselves between the terrorists and our government, and downed the plane, they took a vote.”

Pray. Show up. Courageously claim your identity.  And for heaven’s sake, connect with a community of like-minded souls, who can walk alongside you, strengthening your resolve. Such practices help us give life to the baptismal covenant that seals our God-given identity — “child of God, beloved and called.”

As we make our way “through many dangers, toils, and snares,”[1] may we be en-couraged to walk in our rabbi’s footsteps.

[1] John Newton, “Amazing Grace” hymn text.