‘They do not know what they are doing.’ Luke 23:34
Max Lucado writes: ‘It begins as a drop of water…Someone gets your parking place, pulls in front of you on the motorway, a waitress is slow and you’re in a hurry, the toast burns…Get enough of these seemingly innocent drops of anger and you’ve got a bucket full of rage…We trust no one…bare our teeth at anyone who gets near…become walking time bombs that, given the right amount of tension and fear, could explode…We can’t deny…anger exists. How do we harness it? Jesus said about the mob that killed him, “Father, forgive them…they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34 NIV 2011 Edition)…He saw this bloodthirsty, death-hungry crowd not as murderers, but as victims…He saw in their faces not hatred, but confusion…He regarded them not as a militant mob but “like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34 NIV 2011 Edition). “They don’t know what they are doing…” think about it…they hadn’t the faintest idea…They were a stir-crazy mob, mad at something they couldn’t see so they took it out on, of all people, God. They didn’t know what they were doing, and for the most part neither do we. Much as we hate to admit it, we’re shepherdless sheep…born out of one eternity and frighteningly close to another…We can’t answer our own questions about love and hurt…can’t solve the riddle of ageing…don’t know how to heal our own bodies or get along with our mates…My point is: uncontrolled anger won’t better our world…sympathetic understanding will. Once we begin to operate not from a posture of anger but of compassion…we realise the lights are out…a lot of people are stumbling in the darkness…So we light candles.’
Judg 19-21,
John 8:1-27
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