“Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” (Romans 12:19)
Summer time is upon us, and one of the best parts of that is how we can do all sorts of neat things outside like playing sports, cooking on the grill, and just enjoying God’s creation. If you are like any human on this planet, when you were a kid, you would go out at dusk and catch lightning bugs. Maybe you put them in a jar with some grass clippings and took them into your room for the night. It was pretty cool to turn off all the lights and watch them glow. It set off a surreal aura to the room. When I was a kid, some of the girls would pull the “glow part” off and put it on their finger and pretend it was a wedding ring. Maybe you had your favorite thing to do with them that is different. By the time we got a little older, we discovered how cool it was to take a whiffle ball bat and try to hit them with it. That is clearly the best way to “hunt” lightning bugs. You would see them rise from the grass, and begin “stalking” them with bat in hand, poised for the opportunity to drive a double into the gap (a little baseball analogy). Positioned just right, as the unsuspecting bug would light up, a skillfully placed swing would explode it into few little pieces of light, and if you hit it just right, would leave a “remnant” of glowing bug juice on the bat. We called it “poor man’s fireworks”.
I know… I know… That sounds really cruel and vicious. It is a bug. God makes plenty of them, and despite all the thousands of them that each one of us have killed in our lives, the supply is still as plenteous as ever. Besides, it is far more cruel to capture them, rip them from home and family and put them in a jar prison to starve them and make them die a slow and agonizing death. Sending them to bug heaven instantly with one swing of the bat is far more compassionate.
When my son Jeff was young, this was one of our favorite summer activities. A couple of times a week, we would hit the yard and hunt lightning bugs. Invariably, as I was stalking one, Jeff would seem to find the same one. Just as I was about to blast one into eternity, I would see Jeff coming up from the corner of my eye after the same one. In mid swing, I would have to pull back or run the risk of smacking my son upside the head with a bat. Sometimes we had to just divide the yard so this would not be a problem.
Every one of us has “enemies”. I put that in quotes, because quite frankly, I don’t think that in my short 59 years on this planet that I can really say that I have ever had a real enemy – someone who would be actively plotting my demise and seeking every opportunity to carry it out. You are probably no different. I am not talking about general enemies like terrorists. They don’t know my name and their hatred is not directed at me personally. We just have people we don’t like, and people who don’t like us. There are some out there who might even do some bad things to us, but they are probably not consumed with a daily relentless pursuit of our destruction. When those bad things happen to us, we want pay back. We live in such a hyper-litigious society that whenever something goes wrong, the courts are filled with frivolous attempts to make someone else pay for it. Vengeance is a multi-million dollar industry in our culture.
God tells us to give place to vengeance and let him handle it. He knows how to do it, and he will take care of real enemies at the right time, and in the right way. Just about the time he is ready to land one on their kisser, if he sees us out of the corner of his eye aiming for the same thing, he has to stop so he doesn’t smack us. A far more important issue is to remember where you came from. Jesus reconciled you to God when you were his enemy (Romans 5:6-10). His grace trumps all our perceived wrongs. Instead of taking your pound of flesh, put it in God’s hands. Take the blessed gospel of grace and turn your enemy into a friend by bringing them to Jesus.
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