Praying For Our Enemies

This week was a terrible week in Ottawa. There are a plethora of posts about it on Facebook by now. I won't go into the details, you've likely seen them already. If not, there are better educated people talking about it on-line.

However, I will say that I've been thinking a lot about Michael Zehaf Bibeau. The shooter. 

More specifically - His family.

When tragedy like this hits, our first response is to pray for the victim and their family. Which is good! Don't get me wrong. Not praying for them would be awful.

But what about the culprit? More specifically, what about his family?

If I was Michael's father, I would be a mess today. I probably wouldn't even be out of bed. You're full of grief at the lose of your son... and the horrible things he did minutes before his death. Man, I'm getting down just thinking about it.

Assisting the "enemy" is something that human nature tells us to not to do.

Then I read Matthew 5:43-45

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[a] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children 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.

Yesh.

That's why I'm trying to see our enemies differently. Michael Zehaf Bibeau did a terrible thing. However, his family shouldn't suffer for it. 

Had he survived, I think I'd still be writing this. Though I would change it slightly. Pray for the family but also the culprit. How to pray, is beyond me. I guess that's why we have the Holy Spirit. When stuff like this happens and we don't have the words.

OK! That's was heavy. Happy post next week, promise!

Miley Cyrus

I can't seem to avoid that name. She's all over the web, my FaceBook news feed, the news feed that's always on in the LIFE studio and she's even breached casual conversations. All from a very inappropriate performance on the VMA's (which I didn't even know happened until this whole ordeal).

I tried watching the video. I lasted about 5-6 seconds. I don't recommend you try to best me.

What I do want to recommend - we pray.

Whenever celebrities derail, it's so easy to point fingers! We call them names and even accuse society for causing them to go like this, but that doesn't really help All it does is makes us look/feel better. 

I've done that. A lot. Even with Miley. However, this time, I really want things to be different. 

Instead of coming up with cleaver ways to run her down, let's pray.

Pray that she would be able to see the impact stuff like this has, pray that she gets some solid role models/mentors in her life and pray she remembers her roots. I mean the Christian ones, not the Hanna Montana ones. She is (or was... not sure where she is now...) a confessing Christian. 

I don't want to sound preachy, or "holier than though". Mostly cause, I'm not. But I do want the church to try to be a light in this instead of a lynch mob.

O.K. That's my serious post for the year. Back to Batman, drooling over music and flying cats next week.