I'm impressed by several things. One being people who love well and whose presence disarms in such a way that others can be received as they are. Another is people who love well away from the spotlight -- those who have learned the art of serving in silence, savoring the reward of joining God's project, content with the audience of "one".
Another still is people who love their enemies. Those who seek to bless those who curse them. People who have such a deep sense of how God has related to us that they relate to others with the same transformative power of grace.
Without embarrassing Jim Wallis too much, I was struck by the way he talked about Glenn Beck while he was Down Under last week. Jim doesn't often need an introduction to New Zealand and Australian audiences, but in this recent interview with the Salvation Army youth movement, "Just Salvos," they did need to introduce someone who Kiwis and Aussies haven't heard much about: Glenn Beck.
I'll let you watch it for yourself, but what impressed me is the way Jim didn't play the game, didn't humiliate or name-call, but held out an invitation with the kind of faith that trusts God can change hearts and lives. That no one is beyond the transforming power of grace. Anyone who has really studied the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will know it is actions like this that truly reflect his legacy.
Lord, with those we are in conflict, may we all learn to live the transformative love you share with us. Amen.
Jarrod McKenna is seeking to live God's love in a world where business as usual is costing us the earth (at the expense of the poor). He is the national advisor for youth, faith, and activism for World Vision Australia, a co-founder of the Peace Tree Community serving with the marginalised in one of the poorest of areas in his city, and is the founder and creative director of Empowering Peacemakers (EPYC), for which he has received an Australian peace award in his work in empowering a generation of "eco-evangelists" and "peace prophets."
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