If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. (Rom 12:18)
Shalom brothers and sisters,
When I say shalom today, I mean it as I wish peace for us all because peace is not what we have today.
The result of the fall in the Garden of Eden is that our society undergoes cycles of violence and instability. The first cycle culminated in the first destruction of earth because all men’s thoughts were evil continually. This pattern has played out over and over. Just in the last hundred years, almost exactly, we’ve had two world wars and a Cold War where governments attained the power to exterminate life on earth. We seem to be on the upswing of another cycle, with Israel being told to stop and make peace with demons, Russia invading Ukraine, mass shootings happening at an alarming pace, and now our former president’s attempted assassination. These events are meant to wear us down, coarsen our hearts, and elicit negative reactions thus continuing the cycle. But this is not the path of believers.
We have just lived through another startling historic event that we will remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news. Somebody tried to assassinate a former president at a campaign rally. Three people behind the president were shot, one fatally. We learned this information through the same news that continually ramps up the very rhetoric which leads to these events. It appears we are on a hamster wheel, huh?
The old adage of “you are what you eat” is true. Violence begets violence and it doesn’t start with a violent act. Our Messiah taught us, or reminded us, that it starts with evil thoughts. It starts with envy, jealousy, or in many cases, poor souls believing the click-bait “if it bleeds it leads” media and internet personalities telling them repeatedly that the world is going to end. Our news diet is incredibly rich in Vitamin Fear to the point that we likely don’t notice it anymore, and certainly not on the level we did with earlier tragedies.
The cycle will try to complete again with those in the world. We’ll learn who the shooter was, some will blame guns, others will blame rhetoric, people will try to classify the crime so it can be put on the shelf. Rinse, repeat as necessary. But we will not. We know better. We know the cycle. We know we’ve been commanded to be peaceful stewards of the knowledge of God and His Christ.
We know that Yahweh cares for all His creation and does not want any to perish. We know He sent His Son to suffer violence so we can have the opportunity for salvation. We know, through Torah and the Messiah, how to attain peace in this life. Believe in Yeshua, follow the Torah, and be positive influences, trying to draw people to our common faith. We know this world is violent and corrupt so we choose not to participate in that evil. We choose to surround ourselves with loving brothers and sisters, related by blood, by marriage, and by the adoption we receive through the shed blood of Yeshua.
My friends, stay strong in the faith in these trying times. Pray for our leaders. Pray for people to soften their hearts. And pray for the return of Yeshua.