After a three year hiatus the time has come to renew my commitment to writing. Why now? Much has transpired in the three years and the time is right to make some sense of it.
We can never take our civil rights for granted. The cancer of bigotry and misogyny is alive and well in the land of the free, along with alternate facts and people of the lie. This past Martin Luther King Day provoked prayer study of his words, his life and his death. A few of these thoughts are found within this blog.
We are quite familiar with the Parable of the Sower and have studied the lessons learned from this parable a number of times. In the parable an anonymous sower broadly scatters the seed, which is the Word of God; some seed grows fruitfully while other seed does not. We have here, relevant truths for our day and age.
I am a gardener. This is the time of year when we gardeners receive seed catalogs in the mail every day. Thousands of seeds are featured for every type of growing condition or need. The Word of God is like that as well, as it includes many different kinds of seeds, the seeds of love, seeds of faith, and seeds of justice, seeds for times of prosperity and seeds for the dry years. As people of God, we too, become sowers of the Word.
The seeds of faith and scripture sowed by Martin Luther King yielded fruit in abundance. Rev. King sowed a great many seeds of the Word to promote justice and equality. Here are a few examples from his sermons. Here is what Rev. King said about the greatest seed of all, love. "Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you." This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love. Recently, I encountered abuse of power. It's easy to hate. It is easy to go to the dark side. These are the weeds in the garden. To grow good fruit we need to meet the enemy straight on with love. That's not to say the enemy becomes a best friend. No, it means that we pray for the enemy, that if we encounter the enemy in trouble, we offer assistance.
"But Jesus says love them. And love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, "Love your enemy." This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it. Montgomery Bus Boycott speech, at Holt Street Baptist Church" (5 December 1955).
Imagine the beauty own if Christians followed the Word and sowed the seed of love. We see people abandoning the Church and when I talk with some of these people I hear over and over that they do not see love in action within the church. We have our petty squabbles that consume time, energy and destroy the health of the Church. We have power figures who abuse that power to denigrate, demean and degrade the Body of Christ.
Sometimes, we gardeners plant different seeds together. For example, a variety of salad greens grow together or a variety of wild flower seeds to grow the create a more beautiful, more natural looking garden. Reverend King spoke about the seeds of love and justice being planted together. It is not enough for us to talk about love, love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian faith and face. Reverend King said, "Justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.” Rev. King used the Word of God to plant the seeds of love and justice even in the face of our enemies. Let’s follow in his footsteps sowing the seeds of love and justice to correct that which revolts against love.
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