Hurting verses healing: we fight an uphill battle

I was listening to a book today and something came up. To put it in the most general terms would be something along the lines of, "Hurting is easy. It's healing that is hard."

...and I haven't been able to get that thought out of my mind today. So, let's examine.

Knives. It is really easy to cut someone. A stranger. Ourselves. A friend. A child by accident. Yet, to use a knife to heal and help requires skill, wisdom, and precision. Surgeons use knives to remove infection, to save the body when a limb has died, and to correct other types of internal brokenness. Few can heal with a knife, but almost anyone can hurt with one.

How about words? Even the Bible talks about the dual power of the tongue. Specifically, Proverbs 18:21 says, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue..."

We know this is true though. How many times have you lashed out at someone verbally and caused tremendous damage? How many times has it happened to you? The person doing it doesn't even have to realize what they've done. Their intentions may have been good, but it was the wrong time, the wrong word, or just done in a careless way. And the help they meant to give (or the joke to tell) becomes a hurt.

Parents. How many times have we used our words to hurt our children instead of helping and healing them? ...and trust me. While children are resilient, their psyche is still being affected. I may use my words to try to heal 100 times, but if I use the same mouth to hurt even once, that is what sticks in my child's mind the next time we are having an argument.

Spouses. Same thing. How easy is it to use our words to hurt our spouses?? How much harder to make up and correct things? It's easier to ignore the pain and hope it just goes away than it is to actively use our words to heal the wounds.

There are others areas this applies to as well, but these were the two on my mind. If you can think of others, or even ones that this "easier to hurt than to heal" principle does not apply to, comment below or on Facebook. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

May we all find ourselves actively seeking to heal and not to hurt in what we do, think, and say!


To God be the glory!

Refugees in America?? - we've done this before....

I realize that this is a popular news item right now. I don't always touch on hot topics of the day, but I'm reminded of my favorite quote about history.

"Those who forget history are condemned to relive it. Those who do remember are condemned to watch everyone else relive it."

I realize that I live in Iowa and I am nowhere near the Mexican-American border. Many of you who read this will not be near that border either. We don't live in Texas, new Mexico, Arizona, or California. We aren't use to the idea that terrorists have free access to our state....because those states are a buffer between us and that reality.

So, "yes," aiding and bringing Syrian refugees into our country has the potential to bring terrorists into our country. Reality: so does our southern border!

Added note: I have been touched by the show of solidarity for France this weekend. I remember being grateful for the same shows of solidarity that America received after 09/11. I just can't help but wonder, why support France but not Syrian refugees??

I don't think it's racial, by the way. That's the easy answer, but I don't think it's the issue. There are some cultural divides that definitely play a role, but here is the real truth as I see it. We want to be able to help by proxy, but we don't want to go out into the street and have to see the people we are helping. It is very different to change a picture or post a thought as compared to having to see (or even know of) people from another world living near you...or even within your area of the country.

So, what do we do? Do we close our borders and refuse to let people in who need the help? Wait? What's that sound?? That's right, it's the sound of history ringing in our ears. This is the history that I am choosing not to forget but that I'm afraid our society has forgotten and I may be condemned to watch them repeat it.

1930's. It was a dangerous and tumultuous time. Adolf Hitler has gained power. He has already hit religion by the imprisonment or exile of over 1,000 church leaders and influential laymen. But now he focuses on the Jewish question. He hasn't been forcing them into ghettos yet, but yet he is persecuting them. Jews are being run out of business and run out of their homes. So, where do these refugees go? Do they flee to other European countries? Wait. What about America? This is a land of opportunity and surely they would protect and support the persecuted Jews of Germany.

Well, the reality was different. Most European countries all but closed their doors and America wasn't much better. I haven't fact checked this so take it on my memory, but I believe it was our secretary of state at the time who was an anti-Semite and who pushed to have as many visas of Jews denied as possible. Why? Well, they were a burden on our society? What if spies came in amongst them? We don't know their culture and they are just different.

The reasons, I am sure, were more than that and probably many were deeper and seemed good at the time. Yet, the result was the same: Jews that would have fled Germany were denied the ability to while there was time and instead found themselves in concentration camps later in the war.

Human beings in need. That's who the majority of these refugees are. They are human beings in need. For how much I see posts on Facebook about helping people, why are we so scared to help the ones that might come to us? Maybe there is a terrorist in midst. Maybe 20. I mean, it only took 17 (or 19??) to pull off the attacks on 9/11, right? That's true. But what kind of world do we live in and what kind of Christians are we when we shut people out for fear of the unknown??



To God be the glory.

Lessons from music

Ok, I know that I'm weird. One way I'm weird is that I LOVE listening to music sung in other languages. I love deciding if I like the sound of the music and the sound of the persons voice regardless of what they are saying. Do they sound on-key? Does the music flow? Do they flow together? It's just easier to hear some of that when you don't even understand the words.

I've listened to Mandarin and Taiwanese and really enjoy them.

A friend is helping me work on German once a month right now so I have been listening to German music. My teacher pointed me to Christian music in German months ago and I've listened to tons.

Once I'm done deciding if I like the sound of the music and the person singing, I start getting curious about the words. In truth, I don't do too much. To try to translate songs into another language is an absolute pain. You don't have the nuance and culture that goes into the words. You can't just literally translate. even the websites I've found have often been really rough. So I don't normally do much more than the title itself.

Today I was listening to a song and I wanted to know what it was saying. The phrase was "Du bist mein Ziel." All that really matters is that the first three words mean "you are my..." and the last word, if I understand correctly is roughly "aim" - as in, goal or target.

And I found myself challenged by one simple line in a song that I really liked and I don't understand 99% of it.

When we are heading on vacation we spend weeks prepping. We start get things in order. Who will take care of the pets? Who will get the mail? how are we traveling (plane, car, etc.)? Who is going (take the kids or don't)? ---- So many details and we focus on them.

Moving is even more extreme. We are going from living in one place to living in another. So we have a goal and a target for where to end up. We then focus a LOT of our time on getting things in order to make that happen.

Yet. I call myself a Christian. My goal is to be like Christ. The ultimate goal of my life is to glorify God. I want to love others as Jesus loves me. I want to care for orphans and widows. I want to share the amazing good news of Christ and what He has done for me. So, if those are my goals and aims in this life...what am I doing about it? Does my life reflect that these are my goals? Goals aren't things that you ignore and hope to get to eventually. They are things you strive for and make sacrifice to achieve.

If God and His glory is my ultimate aim then what am I doing today to move towards that goal?


To God be the glory!!

Respect and responsibility: who is teaching your children?

The last couple days I've posted on respect for authority and respect for life.

Today I want to wrap this little mini-series up by talking about respect (in general) and responsibility.

Respect and courtesy. Where in the world did this go?? If you look at my post on respect for authority, I linked to an article about a man who was pulled over while carrying a concealed weapon. He was respectful from the first moment and his exchange with the police was a positive one.

Why do we have to be aggressive and offensive in our posture and language? Why do we have to assume that people are out to get us and not just be neutral toward strangers? Even a neutral attitude is better than an aggressive one.

Admittedly, I know more people who are generally respectful to each other than I know ones who are not. I see and hear stories from friends and co-workers that spur this line of my post. It's a younger generation: a generation that does not feel the need to be respectful toward anyone yet expects respect be shown to them and is belligerent when someone dares to not show them the respect they "deserve." I remember feeling and acting this way when I was younger too and thank God I was rarely (if ever) in the situations that could have turned that attitude into real-world problems (police shootings, fights at school, fights on the street, etc.)

When you see someone driving really slow do you try to consider what their day may have been like? Do you consider what life has thrown their way? Or do you just get angry because, whatever else, they are ruining your moment in time - and heaven forbid that any of your moments be ruined! *sarcasm*

Here's the irony. When we tell our kids that "respect has to be earned" (which is true) do we ever tell them how to earn it? Do we ever lay out for them what is needed to earn respect from others or do we just tell them that they have to earn it and then leave them guessing about how to do that? My argument is that to earn respect one must first be respectful. Showing respect will not always cause the other person to respect you in turn, but 99% of the time it at least not escalate the situation. Most of the time it will earn you respect; especially as you show the people around you that you live a lifestyle of respecting others.

Responsibility. When did we (as a society and individually) stop taking responsibility for our own actions? This goes back to my post on authority too. Do you blame the officer for pulling you over or do you admit that you were speeding and wrong? Do you assume that if someone honks at you that they are angry and wrong or do you first check to see if you've done something wrong?

All of the police shootings lately. Here is one issue I have. Most people who are taking sides want to demand responsibility for the person they disagree with and then expect none from the person they are supporting. What? You are going to just excuse everything away from one side and demand full responsibility from the other?? Do you understand that every time we do that we are enabling these kids to maintain a lifestyle of non-responsibility!! Not only that, but all the kids watching these situations are learning the same lesson.

That isn't real life people. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I rarely find life to be one-sided like that. When my wife gets angry with me: guess what - I've been doing things that were not communicating well or (never me) even antagonistic. I'm not innocent. Even silence when I should be talking is my responsibility. Same with my daughters, my extended family, and my friends. Even if, on the outside, they look 100% responsible, I am confident that most of the time I hold responsibility in some way. Maybe I could have diffused the situation with a little respect. Maybe I could have kept my cool at a certain moment and allowed things to resolve faster. Maybe my example of anger to my daughter has been teaching her bad habits so I have responsibility in that.

My point is not that I spend my whole life questioning my actions or excusing other people's actions. When my daughter acts in anger, she is help accountable and we deal with it. However, when I act in anger the same is true. (I have stood in time out, holding my 8 year old, because while she was not appropriate, I had done things to antagonize as well and I held myself accountable.) What is DOES mean, is that when I am in a moment of tension or a moment of restitution, I will never just assume that I have no responsibility in the matter. I might not have any...but I'm going to think carefully through the event(s) to ensure that I don't or to find where I do so that I can keep myself accountable. It's clear to me that if society agrees with my cause or my argument they WON'T keep me accountable so it becomes my responsibility to do it.

When we don't make our children apologize when they are wrong just because the other child was more wrong...when we don't make our children apologize for what they have done: we enable them and their behavior.

"The answer to one extreme is almost never to opposite extreme." - Balance is the reality of our lives. We are not living in bubbles where only one person is responsible for conflict and, therefore, conflict resolution (again, sometimes - but rarely). We all must take part. So let's stop enabling our young people to feel that they need not take any responsibility and let's not enable ourselves to do that either.


To God be the glory.