Eastertide
May 4, 2016

Scripture Reading: Psalm 97

The Lord loves those who hate evil;
   he guards the lives of his faithful;
   he rescues them from the hand of the wicked.
Light dawns for the righteous,
   and joy for the upright in heart.
Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous,
   and give thanks to his holy name! –Psalm 97:10-12

What is evil? The Hebrew word translated as evil in the above scripture is described as adversity.* Other words identified as descriptive are malignant, giving pain. Hate does spread like a cancer. The Psalmist seems to be telling us that the one thing we can hate is hate itself.

I am sickened by the voice of hate that is epidemic in our land. We who call ourselves Christians seem to be some of the most rabid proponents of identifying people who fall outside our definition of who is acceptable and who is not. We somehow seem to think that if we hate enough we will be of greater worth to God. Of course, the very opposite of that is what Jesus taught. Jesus called us to love and actually freed us of the responsibility to judge anyone by accepting that assignment himself. If we choose to use the Bible as a guide for what is sin and thus how to avoid it, we do that to guide our own behavior not the behavior of others.

 God’s love is the only thing that can overcome evil. We can rest assured in that. By melding our love together as the Body of Christ in the world today, our love, not vestiges of hate, will make us a tool in God’s hands to conquer evil.

Prayer: Lord, protect us from the malignancy of evil spreading through the world and strengthen our work to love like you. Amen.

*Strong’s Concordance see at http://biblehub.com/hebrew/7451.htm

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized 
Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council 
of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights 
reserved.