Salt & Light: Peace in an Angry World

I recently had the great privilege of visiting Pastor Bill Wilson, founder of Metro World Child in Brooklyn, NY. He introduced me to Christ, as a little girl. One of the phrases I remember him saying over & over was,"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem". The ministry has expanded greatly, now reaching children all over the world. While we're all enduring challenges & changes due to covid, finances, politics & life in general, they remain focused & intentional on helping kids. Being a solution.

I admit, I didn't always value this wisdom, but here I am, 40 years later, echoing this truth. This mindset was critical to my healing from mental illness.

Acknowledging suffering is easy. Doing something productive about it may not always be easy, but it is life-giving & empowering. We can't control our surroundings, but we can learn to control how we respond to them. What does that look like in today's world? How can we be salt (preserving what's good) & light (standing against the darkness) as described in Mt 5:13-16?

"We can either curse the dark, or light a candle"

"Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold" - Mt 24:12

I believe part of the answer is learning to process the pain of this world, as Jesus did. He was able to acknowledge anger over injustice & oppression, allowed it to break His heart & responded with an act of compassion.

In Mt 21:12-14, Jesus is angry that the temple (His Father's house) had been turned into a market place. He flips tables over & drives people out. He expresses His righteous anger in an obvious way. Then, the blind & lame came & He healed them. Mt 23:13-37 tells of Jesus soundly telling off the hypocritical pharisees, with a series of "Woe to you" statements. He ends with heartfelt words, longing to gather Jerusalem's children together, as a hen gathers her chicks. In Mark 3:5, Jesus, looks angrily at those trying to trap Him & grieved over their hard hearts, heals a man's withered hand. In John 11:33-35, we learn how Jesus became angry & agitated at the emotional scene of His friend Lazarus' death. Then, He weeps & raises him from the dead. In each of these instances, righteous anger is expressed, compassion is roused & followed by an act of kindness.

As the pain of lawlessness increases, so will the temptation to let our own hearts become hard. Our natural, "It's not fair" reaction, followed by a cry for God to "Do something!", is real. Yet, we don't have to stay angry or hopeless. Because we have the mind of Christ (1Cor 2:16) we can learn to let our reasoning minds calculate suffering & experience righteous, productive anger. We can then, allow that anger to break our hearts with compassionate grief; motivating our souls to connect with & bless other hurting souls. In this way, we preserve God's law of love, while standing out against the evil of this world. Salt & light. A righteous, merciful solution. One that will affect the way we live our temporary lives here. One that invests in the Kingdom. One that changes us & those around us.

The world is looking for peace in these troubled times. The believer serves the Prince of Peace. We can learn to think, speak & act like it. We can process our anger by:

Aligning - ourselves with Christ, choosing to respond to pain as He did.

Naming - what we are angry about, calling out & exposing evil.

Grieving - expressing our pain through Godly sorrow.

Engaging - others, listening & sharing; mourning together with hope.

Reaching - out to someone who is in pain, serving & blessing another.

Being faithful doers of the Word, will keep us from becoming loveless in this world. Choosing to continuously do the right thing, even as the world around us falls apart, is powerful. It's who we were meant to be. We are the solution. Living this truth will ground us. It can even motivate us to live out our lives as Pastor Bill, in his seventies, still serving.

May we allow righteous anger & Godly sorrow to move us to hope & obedient service, in Christ's name.

All rights reserved Veronica Jimenez, Sound Mind Awareness ©2021