The Kingdom in Action

I felt simply awful last night and have felt tired most of today, so I neglected to write my thoughts after yesterday at Enterprise MS. By the way, there is nothing quite like a good bout of the flu to remind me how much I take health for granted. But I digress.

In my last period I showed a video about Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce people. The movie starts with a scene of two Nez Perce men (a young man and his aged father). A settler comes upon them and accuses them of stealing his horses. There is a short interchange as they deny it and he extends his hand as if to say, "Sorry to trouble you." Yet, as he shakes the hand of the older man, he raises his rifle, shoots him in the stomach, and kills him.

Later in the movie that young brave kills the man who killed his father (along with other settlers), and even later the friends of the killed settlers take revenge on the Nez Perce people.

Now, the truth is that the Native American/Anglo-settler conflict is complex and muddy in many ways, but as I watched the movie, I kept thinking about how this was a great picture for the futility of revenge. It made me frustrated to think about how the cycle of revenge kept perpetuating itself and dragging more people down with it!

I realized that this was the message I wanted to highlight -- revenge, though sweet going down, is always bitter in the end. This is truly a kingdom principle. Leave room for God to revenge. Don't take it upon yourself. Who has hurt me recently that I want to take revenge on? Am I currently trying to get back at anybody? Good questions for me to ponder.