When the social or political norms are challenged in a culture, it can threaten time-honored ways of being and doing. Every liberty won by citizens in modern times has come at some cost to the status quo. The end of slavery, women’s suffrage, desegregation, and gay rights, all were hard fought fights that divided families, churches, and communities. When Jesus says to the disciples, “Do not think I have come to bring peace to the world; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword”, I believe that he is speaking about just that reality, the very real pain and resistance that we human beings often experience when the things we know begin to fall apart. All things that are new take the place of things that are old and familiar, no matter how hard we might try to hang on to them.
God, we live in a world where changes are accelerating. Please help us to have compassion for the suffering that arises, for us and for others, when the nearness of the kingdom overwhelms everything we know.
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