We participate in lifting up the world to God in our hearts through our intercessory prayers, saying “Your will be done”. Some of us think we’re bothering a still-faced God when we pray; but to intercede is to carefully consider what we know God’s will to be and to come into agreement with it - we look at the world through the lens of Christ. Sometimes the anxiety we feel about the world around us is the groaning of the Spirit within, and an invitation to intercede. Intercession, when rightly held, spurs us to right action - we are formed by the “amen” to God’s will and set out to become God’s hands and feet.
To be “God’s people” is to practice self-control in a world of indulgence; to conduct ourselves publicly as witness to the Light, and to honor everyone amidst the churn of political insanity.
To live in the name of Jesus is to develop the courage and imagination to live peaceably in a violent world. We so often want to immediately find the loopholes to what Jesus is saying about loving our enemies and not resisting evil, before sitting in awe at his vision for his people. Nonviolence is not passivity, but a struggle to find alternatives to violence - our weapons become kindness, forgiveness, and peaceful resistance.
