August 23, 2016

Love Always Wins

Sometimes, when life hands you lemons, you have a chance to show love.

Between Friday night and Saturday morning, someone (or a group of someones) tagged St. Michael the Archangel Episcopal Church with graffiti. It wasn’t pretty. The doors were covered, as well as part of the sidewalk and entrance. Some of the messages were pretty raunchy.

No sooner had the rector, the Rev. Laurie Brock, sent out a message about the vandalism than parishioners showed up, rolled their sleeves, and began scrubbing. Had the cleanup stopped there, it would have been a story about the congregation responding quickly to an unfortunate situation.

But instead, the next day, Brock invited parishioners to use sidewalk chalk to “tag” the church sidewalks and drive – but this time with expressions of God’s love.

"The vandalism is not the story. That's a part of it. The end of the story is always love in the Christian faith," Brock told the reporter. "When people send out into the world hate and violence, our responsibility is to respond with love."

In pink and yellow and blue chalk, parishioners young and old scribbled messages of forgiveness and love. “Unlearn fear and hate.” “God is love.” “Love always wins.”

The local news picked up the story and it’s spread quickly on social media. This is the type of public witness that changes hearts that shows not only what we believe but also how our faith shapes our lives.

We have chances to witness God’s love every day, if we only see them as opportunities, as lemonade instead of lemons. What will you do today? How will you show that love always wins?

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