Mediating

The last time I posted the world was different, our country and my county in particular was ravaged by Covid 19, it was the day before the infamous Capitol riot. The differences now are very pronounced: Covid is quickly receding (though another variant is rapidly approaching that threatens all the normalcy that we have gained), we have a Democrat in office who seems level headed, the cartoonishness of the last days of the Trump presidency are behind us. As I reflect back in those days I still cannot fathom the events we went through, the division and hatred between the left and right was intense, I was close to losing faith in people. I hated the conservatives, they were endangering lives, hurting people of color and sexuality. They believed in baseless conspiracies and were ugly towards people who were not like them. Yet now I realize that there was some ugliness on my part as well. As I see it we all went through an unprecedented crisis and these types of events tend to reveal our true selves. I always believed in loving people, giving them grace and forgiving weaknesses that are all present within me. But as things devolved I saw myself abandoning this principle, instead of understanding and forgiving like the Lord I was constantly angry and bitter, judging conservatives, despising "Karen's", labelling people in the political right as hopelessly irredeemable. Yet I remember the Lord's last words "Father forgive them for they do not know what they do". I think I failed my test, I chose anger over grace, I chose to condemn and judge when I could have placed my beliefs into practice. We all need a lot of healing for 2020, it was terrible and continues to raise fears. But if we continue to tear each other apart we will never get there.