I’ve had to confess and repent something lately.

Previously, whenever someone mentioned “black lives matter,” I’d be one of the first to come back with “all lives matter.” I didn’t get it.

Looking at one of the parable that Jesus taught, I’m starting to understand. Jesus left the 99 sheep to go looking for the one lost sheep, not because the lives of the 99 didn’t matter but because the life of the one was in danger.

Then I got to thinking about the Samaritan woman at the well.

She definitely understood how it was to be mistreated for her ethnicity. The animosity between Jews and Samaritans was everywhere and all the time. There was no getting away from it. The Jews hated the Samaritans and the Samaritans hated the Jews.

Also she was a women in a time when women were seen more as property and possessions than people. Her testimony in a court of law counted half of what a man’s did. Aside from her potential as a wife and mother, she had no value.

Yet here was this Jewish Rabbi who went out of His way to talk to this Samaritan woman in the hottest part of the day. He didn’t talk at her but to her and listened to her with the intent to understand and not to rebut.

Maybe I’m stepping out of line for saying this, but when I picture this conversation, I don’t hear Jesus saying to the women, “All Samaritan lives matter.”

Of course, they did.

But I imagine Jesus was saying to her, “Your individual life matters to me. You with all of your monumentally screwed up past and bad choices and shame and regret matter to me.”

Jesus looks at you in love at this moment and says to you, “Do you believe that your seemingly insignificant life matters to me? Do you believe that I see and care about you even now?”

Jesus said that His purpose was to seek and to save the lost. He didn’t mean people groups as much as He meant each and every person. He came to seek and to save you. He came to seek and to save me.

It’s one thing to know that God loves everybody in the whole wide world. He loves you because you fall under the category of everybody. But I wonder if you and I really grasp that God in Jesus has set His affections on you and me, not as part of a people group or nationality or race or socioeconomic class, but as individuals who bear the imago dei, the image of God.

Black lives matter. Every black life matters. You matter.

There’s a lot of anxiety and fear going around these days. If you pay attention to the news or social media at all, you will know how much unrest and chaos exists in the world. In fact, I wonder if their goal isn’t to stir up as much anxiety and unrest in you as possible so you will keep coming back for more information.

I know that tonight Jesus is still the Prince of Peace. It is not His will that you live in fear or anxiety. It is His will that you know and understand the Shalom peace that only Jesus can bring, that peace that transcends understanding and casts out all fear.

May that peace be yours tonight.

“To care means first of all to empty our own cup and to allow the other to come close to us. It means to take away the many barriers which prevent us from entering into communion with the other. When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. When others heal, I could have healed too. And when others give life, I could have done the same. Then we experience that we can be present to the soldier who kills, to the guard who pesters, to the young man who plays as if life has no end, and to the old man who stopped playing out of fear for death.

By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness, we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community” (Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life).

The only place where we find true unity and community is the Body of Christ, the Church. If the Church has lost its message of hope for the world, compromising it away for the sake of tolerance and acceptance, then the world is without hope. But if the Church in the face of ridicule and opposition will hold fast to the message of reconciliation given by Jesus, then there’s hope again.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better representation of those times when I pray and nothing coherent comes out. It feels like every thought in my head converges at once to the place where I’m trying to talk with God.

A lot of my prayers probably end up as jumbled as the letters in a bowl of alphabet soup, but the amazing part is that God hears beyond the words and sighs and groans to the heart of the matter beneath.

Sometimes, the words flow like they’re coming from somewhere else, almost like God is praying to God through me. Other times, I do good to get two words out before my mind wanders and my train of thought completely derails.

But even still, I pray. And so should you.

This seems very appropriate for these times:

“Patience is more than endurance. A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says–‘I cannot stand anymore.’ God does not heed, He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly. Trust yourself in God’s hands” (Oswald Chambers).

Trust yourself in God’s hands.

There’s a famous anecdote that a leading 19th century newspaper sent out an inquiry to the leading writers and thinkers of the day with the question “What is wrong with the world?”

Many likely wrote about the ills of society or the breakdown of morality or the failure of leadership, but one man, Gilbert K. Chesterton, wrote probably the shortest yet most profound answer.

His reply was: “Dear Sir, I am. Yours truly, G. K. Chesterton.”

Maybe when I look at all the racial unrest and economic turmoil and pandemic woes that seem to be compounding daily, if I want to pass blame, perhaps I should first look in the mirror.

What have I neglected to do that might have helped or what did I do out of carelessness or thoughtlessness that caused unnecessary harm?

It’s easy to point a self-righteous finger, especially if the target is someone we already didn’t like in the first place. It’s easy to place all the blame on “those” people who think and speak differently than you. It’s easy to build up a wall in social media where the only voices you will tolerate are those who echo your own views and opinions. It’s easy to call for karma for others when they do wrong and yet want grace for your own mistakes.

But it’s another to look in the mirror and see that any change for the better must first come from within. I must be the first to recognize the prejudice, fear, and wrath in my own heart that only God’s love can cast out.

I’ve never sung this particular hymn (at least I don’t think I have), but the words resonated with me again so deeply. It may just be the perfect hymn for 2020:

“Whate’er my God ordains is right:
His holy will abideth;
I will be still whate’er He doth;
And follow where He guideth;
He is my God; though dark my road,
He holds me that I shall not fall:
Wherefore to Him I leave it all.

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
He never will deceive me;
He leads me by the proper path:
I know He will not leave me.
I take, content, what He hath sent;
His hand can turn my griefs away,
And patiently I wait His day.

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
His loving thought attends me;
No poison can be in the cup
That my Physician sends me.
My God is true; each morn anew
I’ll trust His grace unending,
My life to Him commending.

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
He is my Friend and Father;
He suffers naught to do me harm,
Though many storms may gather,
Now I may know both joy and woe,
Some day I shall see clearly
That He hath loved me dearly.

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
Though now this cup, in drinking,
May bitter seem to my faint heart,
I take it, all unshrinking.
My God is true; each morn anew
Sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart,
And pain and sorrow shall depart.

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
Here shall my stand be taken;
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine,
Yet I am not forsaken.
My Father’s care is round me there;
He holds me that I shall not fall:
And so to Him I leave it all.”

Maybe you’re tired of all the negativity floating around and coming from the television screens.

Maybe you’re sick of being definite by your skin color or your income or your profession.

Maybe you needed to hear just once more that God really is for you.

Don’t let the world or the media or Facebook or Instagram define you. Let the God who made you tell you who you are.

I think for a long, long time, people who profess to be Christians have been known far more for what they are against than what they are for.

My pastor talks about his church growing up and how they made it know all that they were against– drinking, gambling, card playing, and the ususal. Then they’d all gather together and celebrate that they hadn’t done anything.

But when I read the Gospels, I see that Jesus is for much more than He is against.

For instance, He is for everyone who comes to Him in faith. He says He will never cast them out.

He is for anyone who consistently and continually asks, seeks, and knocks out of a desperate need for God. He says those are the ones who will find a God who provides.

He is for the poor in spirit, the broken-hearted, the lonely, the destitute, the outcast. He is for us when we are for them, for such is the Kingdom of God.

Jesus is for the person you can’t stand. I don’t mean that Jesus endorses racism or hate or any sinful actions. I do mean that Jesus recognizes every single human being as being created in the image of God and as someone for whom He died on the cross.

Above all, Jesus is for you. Jesus is for me.

Do I believe that black lives matter? Absolutely.

But let me ask you this: do you believe that your individual life matters? Do you believe that your identity is first and foremost not in your gender or race or nationality but in your status as a child of God? You are the one for whom Jesus died. You and I are the lost ones that He came to seek and save.

Jesus is for you.

It seems like Jesus has been redefined lately in several ways. I see where people on the left have made Him into a radical revolutionary while others on the right turn Him into a middle class moralizer.

But for those who know and believe the Gospels, there is only one choice: Son of God, Savior. C. S. Lewis once said that Jesus by His own claims must be a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. There’s no other alternative.

If you read the Bible through the lens of your politics, it’s inevitable that you will end up recreating God and Jesus in your own image. He will love all the people you love and hate all the people you hate. Your political standard becomes THE standard to which even God must submit.

But the Bible I read says that Jesus’ foremost mission was not revolution but repentance, reconciliation, reclamation, and restoration. By Jesus’ own words, He came to seek and save the lost.

If Jesus was radical, it was in the way He loved the unlovable, reached out to the unwanted, and offered revolutionary grace to the outcast.

His message was the same to the tax collector and the prostitute, to the leper and to the religious leader: follow Me.

The more I understand of the whole Gospel for the whole person, the more I realize that Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, only get the Gospel half right. Jesus told the woman caught in adultery, “Let the one without sin cast the first stone” and “Neither do I condemn you,” but He also said, “Go and sin no more.”

Believers are called to stand outside of the political system and to be prophetic voices to both sides. When we side with one against the other, we have committed idolatry and forsaken the true Gospel of Jesus Christ for man-made doctrines.

The Bible says to choose this day whom you will serve. By the grace of God, I implore all of us to choose Jesus.