Leave your gift at the alter...First be Reconciled

I don't think we preach enough about Jesus these days, at least not on how He instructed us to live.  But He doesn't mince words when it comes to conflict resolution.  Most Christians are quick to cite the passage on forgiveness "Lord how many times should we forgive?  Seven times?  Christ said, no, seventy times seven."

Commanded to forgive and move on, right?

But this only deals with half of the problem.  This doesn't address sin on the other side of the equation.  For that, we need to accept the passage on reconciliation as a commandment as well.  To do any less, would be a sin.  Christ says "if you bring a gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way.  First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift."  Sometimes this takes a close examination of our hearts to know if we have hurt someone, and then there are times we know it, we've been told, and maybe the other person has done everything they can do, including forgiveness, to provide an environment for reconciliation.

Several years ago, a church I attended was trying to find its way after the senior pastor left.  There was some division in how to move forward, but unity was the "message".  Of course, it should be.  But I mentioned to the interim pastor that without the hard work of reconciliation, there can be no unity.  He must've contemplated on that because a few weeks later, he made that statement from the pulpit.

I try to live this, but more often than not, I find myself in the forgiving commandment and praying for some lifeline of reconciliation.  I don't want to come across as an expert on reconciliation, but I do think that I know what it looks like, and when it is being withheld.  And when that happens, it leaves those affected in a world of darkness, under the weight of hurt.  This is something that our family has had to cope with, after 10 years of extending forgiveness, time and again, the last cut was the deepest.  I said to one person, after an long conversation, that I wasn't going to beg for reconciliation.  But essentially, I was.  I was deeply wanting to be reconciled to my brothers.  An officially approved letter followed, after some time, and it appeared in our mailbox on a Saturday.  And it only deepened the wound.

So, for my own spiritual health, in the middle of one of hundreds of sleepless nights over those 10 years, I typed out a letter to my wife and myself, framing what I thought reconciliation would look like.  It brought some balm to the wound, and I sent it to two of the leaders whom I had considered my best friends at one time.  In return, several days later, I received an email back that they were going to process it.  And there it ended, 8 months ago.

Friend, whether you are a Christ follower or not, and you've found yourself in a similar situation, I get it.  I hurt for you.  Self-help books and counsel can only go so far.  It isn't about a lack of forgiveness on your part, and it can't be about forgetting.  God made you to be made whole, and if someone is withholding reconciliation, it is going against His design for your life.  In your waiting, which may go on until eternity calls, take that pain and use it in understanding others, in your interactions with others, use it to be Jesus to those around you who may also be hurting.  Sadly, there are probably a lot of us.  And if you are the one taking your gift to the altar, think carefully, ask God to search your heart, either in your corporate actions or individual relationships.  First....first.  First be reconciled.

9/11: Winning the fight, losing the War

So much has changed since that fateful day 17 years ago.  A new generation has no memory of it, the war unleashed on our enemies continues to this day, and as a country, culturally, we've changed.  For those who can remember, in the days, the weeks and months following September 11th, we were absorbed in a kind of unity I don't know that we had ever experienced, certainly in my lifetime, as a people.  We experienced a compassion, courage, sacrifice, that erased the walls of race, mostly, and certainly of party and status.

But those months turned into years.  I recall co-hosting a local radio program at the one-year anniversary of 9/11.  On that, I wondered how long we would experience the unity, the understanding among ourselves. I wondered if we had already forgotten hearts standing united. I remember a caller regretted that could ever happen.

Several years after, I remember listening to a sociologist talk about what drives people together, and what drives them apart.  While not talking about 9/11 specifically, I couldn't help but make the parallel.  He said that the greater the trauma, the closer a society is driven together, but in that same high level experience of trauma, the society, after some time, is driven further apart.  The more frequent and/or greater the trauma, the more dramatic the chasm apart society is driven.  Think about what we've experienced since 9/11 with multiple mass shootings, protests, police shootings-both sides, natural disasters, and uprisings that would only exacerbate the trauma already weighing on our collective psyche.

Does this all sound like gobbledygook?
Have you seen an America more divided than it is right now?

I was born in 1968.  I didn't experience the racial divide of the 1960s, nor would I have been aware of the political unrest caused by the Vietnam War into the 1970s.  I've often thanked God I didn't experience those times, so please, correct me if I am wrong, but this seems unlike those times, even though I have heard it described as the "country coming apart at the seams".  This seems like rage.  A spirit of rage, unchecked, unnamed, excused, and even fanned to higher emotions from people behind keyboards, tweets and posts.

The war began at 9:37 a.m. on September 11, 2001.  We took that battle to their bunkers, thousands of miles away.  And we won the battle, as much as it could be won in a battle stemming from ideology.  However, if the terrorists' goal was to unleash unrest, to defeat a country because of principle, we should all stop and ask ourselves if a divided country is the same thing as a defeated country. We should ask ourselves if we are on a trajectory of losing the war because a nation divided cannot stand.

This I admit to you.  When I stand for the anthem, I am in quiet prayer for healing for this country.  When I place my hand over my heart, I am pledging my life to fulfill the spirit, the dream, the purpose of America.  To see her rise to her full potential, for everyone.  I don't have it in me to hate.  I have no idea what it would be like to be a woman, a black man, an immigrant, or a gay man, and I'm not going to spotlight positions they take to further divide.  I also don't know what it is like to be a Southerner, a soldier, athlete or a police officer.  For some reason, God saw fit to drop this soul into a shell that would have probably the easiest path one could hope for:  a white, evangelical, Republican man from Indiana.  I am called to love every last one of those I am not like, and for me, that means understanding and sometimes extending a lot of grace, just as I hope they extend to me.

We are one people.  We discovered that at 9:38 a.m. on 9/11.  We need to find that again.