I don’t know about you, but I feel like the social scene—both media and old school in person—is becoming a dangerous activity riddled with land mines. The negativity coming at me from all different angles is affecting me today. I am empathetic and protective of my friends, loved ones, and random people I don’t even know who are getting attacked, no matter what side of what issue they are on. It makes me sad. Then it makes me angry. Then I think, wow, we don’t need a virus to take us out, we are just going to take each other out with the sheer power of our hatred.
I can see the enemy cackling and rubbing his hands together. Then my anger starts to turn to judgement and as I am about to put that crooked crown on my head and write with scathing judgement about judgemental people, that warning bell goes off connected to the “log in my eye” light that Jesus installed in my brain. My train of thought has led me into the same loop of selfish thinking that drove the Israelites to wander 40 years in the desert. I will pass on that, thanks.
As a follower of Jesus, I am supposed to be different. I am supposed to check myself and realize the world needs less of me and more of Him. So as I pray in this cloudy, lost place, the Holy Spirit does a white glove test to show me the LAYERS of dust that have settled on and obscured the supernatural Peace that Jesus gave me and this tiny mustard seed of Grace that has the power to break through concrete.
So I sit and open my Bible—the Great Swiffer of the Soul. I read about God’s plan for us to love each other unconditionally and show each other an abundance of grace. I start to see again from God’s perspective and see how He challenges me to shake the dust off that Grace and Peace he gave me and USE it to care for the people He has placed in my life. I have the luxury as His daughter to focus my attention on the good He is doing and the good He wants me to do.
If this pandemic has taught me anything, it is that my house can go months without dusting. My soul cannot last one day.