The Gospel Imperative

But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors, brought them out, and said, “Go, stand in the temple and tell the people the whole message about this life.”  Acts 5: 19

     I have been seeing with new eyes recently or at least with one new eye.  I had a cataract removed last week and it is amazing the colors and shapes of things.  The grass and leaves are a deeper green, the sky a clearer blue, and the shapes of things just seem to pop.   It is as though I am seeing the world for the first time.  I had no idea what I was not seeing.  This experience often happens to me spiritually.  Out of the blue, God gifts me with new eyes to see situations.   I see a bigger picture in a situation that I had thought I understood perfectly.

     My surgery coincided with the murder of 9 black parishioners of Emanuel AME church in Charleston, S.C.  This racist, hate crime is hard to digest – no, it is not digestible.  These 9 people had welcomed the stranger in their midst into prayer.  During these holy moments, the young white man stood and began  yelling racially taunting remarks, followed by the massacre.  Just a few days later the church was filled with worshipers.  Parishioners and family members were already publicly forgiving this young man and praying for his soul.

     The people of Mother Emmanuel are living the life of Christ.  They are not imprisoned by the acts committed against them and are telling the world about this amazing life that God has filled them with.   This is the life that the angel of the Lord instructed Peter and his friends to tell the world about when they were released from prison.

     We know this life too.  Sometimes we take it for granted and choose to not see through God’s eyes.  As the Rev. Goff from Mother Emmanuel said on Sunday, “the only way evil can triumph is for good folks to sit down and do nothing.”

     I pray that all of us good people choose daily to break out of our self-made prisons in order to see through God’s eyes and  tell the world about the amazing life we have been called to.  Don’t keep it a secret!

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

st. francis of assisi - 13th century