Psalm 69:4 (New Living Translation)
Those who hate me without
cause are more numerous than the hairs on my head. These enemies who seek to destroy me are
doing so without cause. They attack me
with lies, demanding that I give back what I didn’t steal.
I was originally going to
include a passage from John 15 where Jesus refers in verse 25 to today’s
passage from Psalms. Despite actually
witnessing the wonderful things he did, and not being able to catch him out
with scriptural arguments, despite him not doing anything wrong, most of the ‘high
heid yins’ in the church didn’t just dislike Jesus, they hated him. It defies logic so, surely, the only conclusion
you can draw is that they were being driven by some powerful sort of evil.
Forgive me for returning to
food analogies, but every now and again, I’ve heard conversations along the
lines of;
Person A I don’t know how you can eat that blue
cheese, I hate it
Person B Have you tried it
Person A No, but I just know I would hate it
For ‘blue cheese’, you could
substitute a number of different foods that have featured in exchanges like the
one shown (garlic, liver, mushrooms, anchovies etc. etc.).
Many years ago, I spent a
month in Corby at a training course and almost every evening meal that month featured
parsnips. I took a total ‘scunner’ to
these vegetables for decades. A couple
of years ago, I bought a bag of mixed vegetables to make soup and there were a
couple of parsnips in the bag so, they went into the soup along with all the
other vegetables and it turned out lovely.
Since then, we regularly have roast parsnips and they’ll feature on
Christmas day. All this despite hating
them for decades.
When we learn of the type of
person Jesus was and the wonderful things he achieved by his life and example,
it makes you wonder how anyone could possibly dislike him never mind hate him –
but some did. They hated him to the
extent that they had him killed to get him out their lives.
If that had worked, none of us
would be remembering his birth over two thousand years later.
Hate is such a dangerous and
powerful word and we should take time to think before deploying it. We shouldn’t hate when there is no reason for
it. The things we should save our hate
for are things like poverty, injustice, dishonesty and cruelty.
We should be forever thankful
that it was ‘love’ and not ‘hate’ that came down that first Christmas.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, Be with all
who believe in you during this advent season and help your believers to share
and introduce the good news of the Gospel to others, each in their own way. Help us put hate and other negative
behaviours aside for this season of advent or perhaps, even longer and replace
them by actions that demonstrate love, kindness, tolerance and forgiveness and
all things positive. In your most
gracious name. Amen
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