#OrlandoUnited - Facing Limitations and Inadequacies

While reading a number of painful responses to the homophobic terrorist attack in Orlando Florida and reading about the victims, I find myself at a loss for words. I struggle to find words to address the pain and injustice and evil of this situation. I am not a member of the LGBT community and I live miles away from this tragic event which give me pause to ask if it is even appropriate to add my words to the conversation. So I stay quiet. In doing so St. Antony comes to mind:

‘He who sits alone and is quiet has escaped from three wars: hearing, speaking, seeing: but there is one thing against which he must continually fight: that is, his own heart.’

I have no connection to this event. I am disturbed and appalled by the actions taken by a sick man with an easily acquired arsenal of weapons. I do not know what to do. So I sit alone and remain quite. Not because I condone such violence or that I am not heartbroken, but to humbly admit that I do not know the way forward. I am confronted with my own limitations and inadequacies knowing that I still feel unequipped to be a man, husband, father, pastor for the world that we live in.

Lord in your mercy.

Can we stop fighting terrorism?

My friend Rev. Lance Marshal  is a much better preacher than I am (as well a better academic,  much more creative, thought provoking and all around a better person). A few weeks ago in a sermon after the Paris attacks he spoke about terrorism. Specifically he drew the parallel to terrorism as cancer. 

In his sermon Season Of Saints: The Way of Healing on November 14, at minute mark 25 Lance fleshes out this metaphor. 

If you don't listen to it, you are missing out on some of the best 5 minutes of preaching. Take time to listen to it. 

Seriously, the last 90 seconds is a prayer so if you only have 3:30 minutes take it to listen to Lance. 

When you do you will hear Lance, a cancer survivor himself, talks about cancer as something that is to be cured despite it is something we talk about "fighting". If it is true that if all of humanity being one body of Christ, then when we "fight" terrorism with more pain, terror and bombs, we are only fighting ourselves. Like cancer, terrorism is not anything you can "fight" or "beat" it is something that can only be cured.