Imagine

Image: Aaron Burden via Unsplash

 

Peace is the beauty of life. It is sunshine. It is the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family. It is the advancement of man, the victory of a just cause, the triumph of truth.

Israeli Prime Minister (1977-1983) and 1978 Nobel Peace Prize recipient (along with Egypt’s President Anwar el-Sadat), Menachem Begin, was born on this day in 1913 (died 1992).

I was going to continue writing about the events of the weekend, but today I’m choosing not to.

Let us instead choose to work toward peace. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, choose to be at peace with your neighbors, with your co-workers, with your friends.

I am keeping up with the news, but I am choosing not to dwell there.

That does not mean that I am indifferent. That does not mean that I don’t care.

It’s a realization that the best, most profitable, thing I can do is to try to live my life with integrity, and honor, and respect.

And so, I get back to the writing, and the reading, and the gym.

I have an acquaintance who just returned from a 30-day social media fast, along with some other health conscious choices. He may have opted to come back too soon.

I’m not ready for a social media fast. I mean, I need to be on here to promote my writing, to build the upcoming newsletter, to find people who will read my script.

That’s why I’m on social media. I have never played Candy Crush and I haven’t played Words with Friends in years.

Sorry if you’re waiting for my next move.

So, there’s a challenge in what I need to use social media for vs. what I don’t want social media to tell me.

I couldn’t watch Game of Thrones until Monday night, so I had to watch which articles and even which headlines I read on Monday.

I do need to turn off social media and distractions while I’m writing.

For example, as much as I pride myself in being able to multitask, I do not have Netflix streaming in the background, or HBO, or Hulu, or any of the other streaming services.

It’s time to write. It’s time to focus.

Events like those of the past weekend, as well as the endless commentary and bickering that follow, can distract and take us off task.

I’m not saying don’t pay attention. We absolutely should.

I’m not saying don’t speak out against the hate. We absolutely should.

But, we can’t let it paralyze us.

Today I’m choosing to move on with life. I’m keeping my eyes open and my ears tuned. But I’m not going to stop doing, and being, and creating just because there is hate in the world.

In fact, that’s exactly the reason we shouldn’t stop what we’re doing.

Live in peace today. Let the sun shine through.

Get out there and imagine it’s a beautiful day. Because it is.


FIVE THINGS FOR YOUR WEDNESDAY

Angry Rhetoric Won’t Cure Racism
The Republican Standard
For too long, we sat back and ignored the warning signs, allowing bigotry and racism to fester in the shadows. It’s a disease we need to cure, but the question is how?

BreakPoint: Charlottesville, Racism, and the Gospel
Responding to Darkness with the Light
Only the biblical vision of the image of God can ground universal dignity, value, and establish human rights. Understanding the biblical concept of the fall keeps us from finding the enemy only in the other, as if the problem is always outside of ourselves. No, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

Gary Johnson: In the Wake of Charlottesville, Let’s Look for Solutions and Not Blame
The Jack News
…even in the aftermath of the weekend events in Charlottesville, we have seen the media and too many politicians get sidetracked into debates over whether we are sufficiently outraged.

Russell Moore: White supremacy angers Jesus, but does it anger his church?
The Washington Post
In a time like this, Christians might ask whether we should, in fact, be angry. Should we not instead just conclude that this is what a fallen world is like and pray for the final judgment to come? If you are feeling distressed and heated, you have reason to be. White supremacy makes Jesus angry.

If We’re Tearing Down White Supremacy, Start With Planned Parenthood
The Federalist
The racist, eugenicist roots of Planned Parenthood are well-documented, as is the paranoid racial and eugenic visions of its founder, Margaret Sanger, who spoke of her desire to create “a new race with a racial soul” in the United States, once cheerfully spoke before a women’s Klan meeting, desired to “keep the doors of Immigration closed” to those “whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race,” and yearned to accentuate “the better racial elements in our society” so as to erase from the population “defective stocks—those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”

AND, FINALLY…

American singer, Eydie Gormé, was born on this day in 1928 (died 2013)


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Verse of the Day selection provided by BibleGateway.com

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