The Day After Tomorrow...

Do you remember the movie, The Day After Tomorrow released in 2004?  In it, Dennis Quaid warned others in various venues about his environmental concerns.  His words fell on deaf ears, probably because their heads were buried ostrich-like in the sands of self-interest.  The rest of movie was predominately about his trek across a frozen, snow covered New York to rescue his son and others during the catastrophic superstorm.

However, it is the end of the movie that I woke up thinking about this morning.  In the end, while the northern third of the world was covered with uninhabitable ice and snow, everyone below the Mason-Dixon line was being evacuated to Mexico.  In 2004, I thought it ironic that the demographic who hated the immigration of our neighbors to the south into our country, now found themselves crossing the river headed south to get into a safer place to live.  Today, however, it wasn't the irony in my thoughts.

I wonder why I woke up thinking about this today.  Could it be that our country is precariously perched on a precipice that prophets have warned about, but no one heeded?  Could it be that our country is so virulently divided that we are devouring ourselves?  You can taste the acrid bitterness in the fall air.  

At the very end of the movie, after many deaths and much trauma, faced with the reality that they were wrong and the buried heads are plucked from the sands, they seem to work together--because they must to survive.  When they were forced by circumstances, they became what they should have been all along.

I am reminded of Galatians 5:14-15 which says, "For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another."  We have broken the law of love.  We have devoured one another, and we will pay the price, even if we weren't the ones purchasing the end product.  

Now what?  What will we do the day after tomorrow?  The choice is ours, we can continue on stubbornly fighting with one another.  We can despair and respond in fear and anger.  We have choices.  

Let all who are under the law of Christ to love our neighbors as ourselves, to pray for those who persecute us, to love our enemies, and to love so that the world might know we are Christ's followers humble ourselves and pray this prayer of confession found in the Book of Worship of the United Methodist Church:

Merciful God,we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart.  We have failed to be an obedient church.  We have not done your will, we have broken your law, we have rebelled against your love, we have not loved our neighbors, and we have not heard the cry of the needy.  Forgive us, we pray.  Free us for joyful obedience, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

And let us keep repeating this daily...hourly...until we begin to be recognized once again by our love for one another.  And let us keep working for the rights of all humanity to live in peace.