I was awakened this morning with a verse in my spirit:

‘that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth,

And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’

… Phil 2:10-11

And then I saw a picture

a plain with many people bowing before a tall, dominating – a golden but intimidating image

fields of people … everyone bowing,

but 3 figures stood alone on the horizon…

only 3 among the multitude that did not bow to this image of man’s making.

And for this, they were apprehended, marked, threatened, intimidated.

And when they would not comply and take the knee to the idol, they were thrown into a fiery furnace,

to put down the rebellion against the king’s word + rid the kingdom of such non-conformity.

It was a defining moment.

But, like Nebuchadnezzar in the Daniel Bible story, who saw a 4^th man walking with them in the fire,

I then heard a song and the words…

‘But I bow down and kiss the Son!’

My life is a pilgrimage and I’ve encountered some times and places of man’s grossest inhumanity: memorials of hate, monuments of injustice, sites and scenes of horrific carnage.

I have visited and seen with my own eyes some of the evil human beings are quite evidently capable of inflicting on one another.

I’ve agonized over questions, sought answers, fought both for and against what I have not understood:

A Montgomery, Alabama bus Rosa Parks would not go the back of; the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham where 4 little girls went to Sunday school one morning but never came home again;

a Memphis motel where an assassin’s bullet cut down Martin Luther King.

Slave forts in Africa: gleaming white walls on the outside filled with unspeakable horrors inside; sepulchres reeking death still hundreds of years later. The killing fields of Cambodia with their macabre shrines of skulls with eyeless sockets staring out … into mine. Train tracks at Auschwitz that abruptly end at piles of discarded suitcases and children’s shoes no longer needed... in the ovens.

And the injustice list goes on = apparently never-ending?

Millions still enslaved today: in brickyards, in the sex trade, in mines and mills and mindless factories.  Abortuaries = our own generation’s Auschwitzes, our ‘home and native land’ reserves, empty of hope.  I’ve stood at walls: Berlin, Tijuana, even one that cuts through the heart of Bethlehem – physical witnesses of not so visible walls that stand tall between and within human hearts and dreams…

and they all screamed: ‘How long? Why? What are you going to do about this? … Do something!’

And so I marched and I protested.  Yet the deaf and deafening senseless violence continued and grew.

And the movements came and went, but the victims’ cries continued unheeded, unhealed… louder.

And I discovered: tweeting and retweeting slogans, ‘Bring back our girls!’ ‘Rid the world of Kony -2012’ are merely window dressing:  ineffective bandaids and panaceas to hopefully make us momentarily feel better about ourselves in the midst of our helplessness.

The pain runs deeper than more legislation, or more police… or less.

These are crimes of the heart, injustices to the spirit.

The roots lie deeper and the festering wounds openly weep until …

I grew tired of empty words + senseless reactions and happened on a hill

called Calvary where this world’s injustices were washed in a Father’s love.

Here this world’s wrongs met their resolution … and their doom!

Mercy triumphs over judgment at Golgotha: the ONLY effective remedy to staunch hatred’s flow, healing both the innocent and the guilty, bringing sin’s vicious cycle of violence to its end.

The ONE who hung on the Cross between heaven + earth died for my sin, my pain, my pride… and yours.

Jesus took all this world’s violence on Himself; He didn’t deserve it, but suffered innocently in our place and cried in the face of injustice, ‘Father, forgive him; they don’t know what they’re doing!’

And His Words cry out still… even more needful and relevant today.

And His Spirit hovers over this confused, hurting, pandemic-racked world …

  to bring that same freeing, healing message to life today.

‘Love one another as I have loved you!’ is His law + key and He laid His life down… and took it up again!

Simple… Powerful…

He cared for me even when I fought against Him;

He sought me out when I wasn’t even looking for Him;

He did more than protest; He 1^st loved me.. and you… when we were only oblivious.

I found out I am part of the problem, but He’s made me part of the solution.

He gave me a voice and hands and feet to speak + flow His life in and through me:

the ONLY effective answer for broken lives and communities: hope + healing for our hurting world!