The Phil Files

Violence has been the staple product of our fallen world. The Bible doesn’t make it four chapters before violence shows up and blows up the first family. It’s been erupting with poisonous venom ever since. We pump a lot of fake violence into our hearts through music, games, and movies. I’m convinced we do this mainly because many are shielded from the violence portrayed or hardened by it so that it no longer bothers them.

But, when you have lived in the cross hairs as a target, things change. Suddenly there is no such thing as “gratuitous violence”: only graphic, ungodly, life-destroying violence. It doesn’t matter whether it occurs far away in a “foreign country” or in the burbs or in the ghettos or in a war-torn place where loved ones risk their lives. Violence is awful, ugly, destructive, and dehumanizing. And for children, well, they end up being the ones most hurt — losing lives, innocence, parents, futures, and hope.

The Bible is a book filled with the reality of violence. I sometimes don’t like that. But when trying to help care for a broken world, I am reassured that God knows the ugly underside of our world and gives us words to speak to it. But more than knowing that ugliness, God has endured it. Beaten, mocked, tortured, cursed, spat upon, belittled, shamed, scorned, ridiculed, and a host of things of unmentionable, God in the human flesh of Jesus of Nazareth chose it to give us hope beyond it. So join my heart in praying the mournful line from Psalm 7 (our reading today is from Psalms 6 and 7):

//Inspiration: Psalm 7:9
Bring an end to the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure — you the righteous God who probes minds and hearts.

//Incarnation:
How can I, one little person in a world so vast, make a difference in a world so captured by violence? I can pray. And I can help a child and advocate for children and work to help those who are abused and neglected as children. And I can turn the other cheek and choose to not retaliate. I can forgive. I can choose to be compassionate. I can assist those who have suffer from the impact of violence in their own lives. There is a lot I can do. But there is is so much: so much hatred, so much bloodshed, so much evil, so much waste, so much violence. So I go to the only one who can fix this mess and I plead this prayer to him … for the wounded … for hurting … for the fearful … for the targeted … for the orphaned … and I pray!

//Invitation:

O LORD God, bring to an end the violence of the wicked! In Jesus name I plead. Amen.