Day 15

But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Matthew 5:44-45

In my sociology class we are wrapping up with the steps of prejudice, the last of which is genocide. Of course there is one example with ample information and teaching material, the Holocaust, so we talked about it in detail, as well as other lesser known genocides. Talking about the Holocaust not only fires me up, but it gets me quite a bit depressed because I always feel like I should have done something. Naturally, this is a silly thing to feel because I wasn't even a whim of thought at the time it was occurring, but none the less I feel guilty. I'm incapable, as I always have been, of understanding how there could be so much hatred to kill so many innocent people. It got me thinking about how I had previously talked about persecution, how I had said that we would be persecuted by those around us, but I realized that I failed to see the other half of the story. In our efforts to spread God's light, we cannot persecute those around us. Now obviously that includes a genocide, but also the small things, like a person to person level,. We can't see those who we are reaching out to as inferior no matter how hard it is. The first verse I memorized helps me a lot when I start to think that way:

Blessed are the poor in spirits, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:2

Mel