Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one
another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not
repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this
you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For, “Whoever would love
life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from
deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue
it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to
their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” (I Peter 3:8-12)
Just in case he missed anyone, Peter sums up his teaching on this point.
In many ways, what he says fits nicely with my commentary on my word of the day
for yesterday: power. Power is not the goal. We're to live in harmony with
others, which means working with, not against them. We're to feel with them.
We're to love them, be compassionate and humble. We're not supposed to play
king of the hill except in our blessing.
I
have to wonder what would happen if for one day, people would keep their
tongues from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. Jim Carey once played a
character who wasn't able to lie for 24 hours. I never saw it, but have to
assume the result was absolute chaos in his life. Given that he played a
lawyer, the assumption is that it destroyed his legal practice, but given that
it was a comedy, it would have made him a better man. At least, that's my
guess. One thing is for sure, if no one lied for 24 hours, the media and
politicians would have very little to say. That would probably be true of the
rest of us, too
Imagine,
too, if for 24 hours, people did good and sought and pursued peace. We can't
make the world take that challenge, but we can take it ourselves. We can refuse
to repay evil with evil, to refuse to threaten those virtual people out there
to "bring it on" so that we can show them what we're made of. We can
refuse to put others down or otherwise insult them even in jest. We can choose
to bless or do good to the people we meet. We can decide not to argue (we can?
Oh dear....) or fight. We can choose to do good and seek peace. We can choose
to tell the truth. If you can't last a whole day, how about lasting 10 seconds?
Then 11 the next time, and 12 the time after that.
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