Words I am Trying to Live By

 Looks like everybody I know is scared. Everybody I know is worried about the economy, poilitics, the diviseness--the negativism that seems to have settled on almost everyone like a brain fog.  Couple this with enormous grief that we all carry. It is hard just to get out of bed knowing what the awaiting TV will rant on and on and on. 

I love the words of Paul written in a whole lot of hard times.  He wrote from the heart: " We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed..." (Still) we do not lose heart..." "...because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal." (II Corinthians 4. 8-9; 16, 18)

Once at Georgetown, Kentucky I remember Alex Haley, the incredible writer telling the story of his roots. And somewhere in that speech he said that when he was a little black boy crying at the kitchen table his Grandmother came close and said: "Alex, we don't know when Jesus will come but he will always come on time."

This is what I keep trying to remember when everything around me seems chaotic.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Forgiveness and January 6th

You may have been watching the January 6th Hearings. Maybe not. That does not matter. There was the moment after the last hearing that touched me deeply. Let me tell you what I saw.

Two of the Proud Boys had defected and told the TV audience about the parts they played in the mob that stormed the Capitol. Stephen Ayres was one of those testifying. At great risk both men stood up and said the January 6th event was wrong. Surely they knew the violence of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers would threaten them and their families. Yet Mr. Ayres told us that he had sold his house, he lost his job and he wondered about his future. 

But as the hearings ended Mr. Ayres spoke to some of those who had been wounded. Some never to work again. Some had lost colleagues. More than one had committed suicide. 150 policemen were wounded. And Ayrers asked one of the Committee members to forgive him. And then he moved on to others. “Please forgive me,” he said.

Some will call this just a thug trying to save his skin. But touching those policemen and officials he asked forgiveness was for me a powerful moment. I do not know how these hearings will end. I do know that I will always remember that tall, red-handed man who bravely asked forgiveness of some that he had harmed. 

Who knows the response of those he talked to? I am not sure of what my response would have been.  But I do know that this man, part of that violent January mob realized the enormity of the wrong he had been a part of. Wonder what Jesus would say about this man’s pleas to those he had harmed.

                                    --Roger Lovette / rogerelovette.blogspot.com