BOMB THREATS, EVIL AND CURTAINS

                                               A bomb threat created chaos this morning as police redirected traffic from our local high school and spent the better part of the day clearing the building. Why? Why this dark shadow falling on this community creating fear and concern. I am always fascinated that, 'perfect love casts out fear." 1 John 4:18. If I know myself to be loved and cared for then I can live outside of fear's strangle hold. I take precautions, of course, I do not live with my head in the sand, but neither do I become paralyzed in the face of an evil twisted world. I spent the day praying and sewing, creating beauty in a world hell-bent on destruction.

Rain drops fell all day, gathering the weight of the world's sorrow, maybe God's as well, as violence rages and threats of bombs bursting turn the life God has given us into a screening for a horror show; our daily life now somehow seems to be X-rated for violence. What God desires and continues to shower on the world is life. He sends it in creation, in the newborn, in the laughter of a toddler, in a  child's embrace. He comes to each of us: "I come that you might have life and life abundant." John 10:10  I can agree with God and create life and beauty and fight evil in this way: making curtains.

I can soften the harshness of an evil world, I can influence it for good and join with God in His creative life giving work. It may be small, but somehow hope finds wings here in believing I can make a difference. I can love and be kind and embrace another. J.R.R. Tolkien said in Return of the King, "Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule." pg. 851

Are you joining with God uprooting evil where you find it, in the fields you know: in your heart, in your family, in your friendships, in your community?

Medicine from Sacred Scripture:

"The word of the Lord came to me, saying, 

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appoint you...

to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant." 

Jeremiah 1:5, 10