Devotional Reading from the Common Daily Lectionary: Matthew 23:29-39

Text: How often I have wished to gather you under my wings as a hen gathers her brood, but you would not. (v. 37b)

I believe that often God looks upon the human family and tears well up in the Divine’s eyes. The Scottish poet Robert Burns had it right when he wrote, “Man’s inhumanity to Man”, a paraphrase of Samuel Pufendorf’s “More inhumanity has been done by man himself than any other of nature’s causes.”

I think of the abandoned and run away children living on the streets of cities throughout the world, refugees trying to get away from war or seek opportunity, mothers and fathers who worry that their son will be killed before the day is done, the parents of missing children … The list is endless.

And then I read Jesus’ lament over the city of Jerusalem before He enters it one more time. Looking down on the majestic city He sees an unwillingness to recognize our common humanity and our willingness to accentuate our differences to the point of death and destruction. It breaks it His heart because it was never supposed to be that way. But it is.

Blessed are the peacemakers, Jesus said earlier in Matthew’s gospel, for they shall be called the sons and daughters of God.  This world sorely needs a few more people to take Jesus seriously. We need more people who are willing to dare to give peace a chance.

Lord, let their be peace on earth, and let it begin with me. Amen. (From the folk song by the same title written by Jill Jackson & Sy Miller)