Our Daily Bread: Voices of FaithNäide

Sword or Supplication?

Jesus answered, “No more of this!” and he touched the man’s ear and healed him. -Luke 22:51

In No Future Without Forgiveness, Archbishop Desmond Tutu recounted his harrowing experience visiting Rwanda a year after the genocide of 1994.

He went as president of an ecumenical body that made pastoral visits to churches in countries experiencing crises. Perhaps none had shaken him to his core, like his visit to Ntarama, a village near Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, where the new government had not removed the corpses of Tutsis murdered in a church.

Tutu described the church as being “like a mortuary, with bodies lying as they had fallen the year before during the massacre.” How could this nation ever heal and move forward, particularly given its vicious “cycle of reprisal and counter reprisal”?

Jesus halted Peter’s violent counterattack against His enemies who accosted Him near Gethsemane (see Mark 14:32). After Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Jesus reprimanded, “No more of this!” and He touched the man and healed Him (Luke 22:51).

Like Jesus, Tutu chose supplication—a posture of humility or making a humble entreaty to God—over the sword in his post-apartheid home country of South Africa, inspiring not only his nation but also Rwanda and countless others entrenched in racism, genocide, war, and other atrocities.

Truthfully, we don’t have innate tendencies to overcome feelings of bitterness, revenge, and hatred when we’re violated, but through Christ’s power and might, we can forgive and forge a brighter future.

Tondra L. Loder-Jackson

Do you find it difficult to forgive personal affronts or social injustices? Are you willing to open your heart, mind, and soul to the assurance that Christ can and will help you forgive?

Lord, I forgive; help my unforgiveness.