For Every Action. . .

My enemies, whom I have never harmed, hunted me down like a bird.  They threw me into a pit  and dropped stones on me. The water rose over my head, and I cried out, “This is the end!”

 - Lamentations 3:52-54 NLT

Like many people, I am mesmerized by the tragedies affecting in our nation this week. As I sit here writing this, news anchors are shrilly reporting every little facet of Boston Marathon Bombing Manhunt, including many “facts” that are not fully verified. Each scene I view is that of a third-world war zone, not the normal, peaceful country I know so well. Then there is the ever-present news ticker crawling across the bottom of TV screen, which relays the basic facts of the story as well as the many unproven yet attention-drawing theories out there. Watching this unfold is like being inundated by a non-stop tsunami of negativity that gets worse with every new and subsequently overly analyzed development. The situation is quickly becoming overwhelming. Like the writer of Lamentations so aptly states, it is easy to feel the severity of the situation rising like the water in the proverbial pit!  

Even though these events do not directly affect me, I feel helpless. I am saddened and reminded once more about how broken humanity is. So, I join with many people in crying out to God, wondering why this is happening and what the future will bring because of these events. To respond to the obvious theodicy issue here, I do not know exactly "why a good and loving God let this evil occur." What I do know though, is that God is going to bring the best possible result out of these tragedies. I am not sure how this will manifest itself, but for some reason I keep hearing the iconic words of Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion echoing in my brain.
  
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." 

Newton wrote these words in response to an experiment during which he observed how energy exerted upon an object was completely reciprocated in a counter reaction. It is a law that explains many elements in our daily lives.  For instance, if you are sitting on a chair, your body exerts a force upon that chair and the chair exerts an equal force back, which prevents you from falling. There are countless other physical examples of this law, but sitting here watching the news coverage I am thinking that this law may extend to social situations as well.  
 
When tragedies happen in our lives, our friends and family are quick to respond with outpourings of loving support. It is an attempt to counter the evil and repair the damage that has transpired. I believe this is due to the Imago Dei or Image of God that exists buried under our brokenness. Guided by the Spirit, the Image of God directs us to live into a greater response to evil, to restore those affected by the negative, free will choices of others. The bigger the tragedy, the more God compels us to react, or to produce “the equal and opposite reaction” that Newton describes.  We can see stirrings of this in our current situation as God is working through the selfless acts of first alert personnel in both Boston and Texas. However, for the most part our "equal and opposite reaction" is its initial phase. This begs the question, what direction will our response take? It would be all too easy to take the Spirit's prodding and use it to human ends, to meet violence with more violence and perpetuate this terrible cycle.  However, if we truly sit back and hear Jesus urging us to "love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you," (Matthew 5:44 NLT) the Divine Path becomes clear. We need to take a different route than the one our anger and pain dictates. Instead, we need to align with God to overwhelm pain with healing; grief with love and hate with forgiveness. Furthermore, God’s love is a power that cannot be matched, so if we successfully live into the Divine Call, there is no way evil can respond to the Kingdom of God that emerges!

This is the one situation where Newton’s law is not applicable. Love always wins! Granted, bringing this about is not an easy proposition. It would be so much simpler to toss the perpetrators "to a group of rabid Red Sox fans" like someone suggested on Facebook.  Moreover, each of us has to find the path in our own lives and understand the individual way we are to contribute to the cause. It is a difficult, time-consuming process. So most times, when tragedy happens, we do just enough to reestablish the status quo. This has defined responses to tragedy throughout history. So let us go forth and make this time be different! Let us seek a breakthrough; channeling God’s grace so that evil’s reaction will become weaker and weaker. May God's justice meet the causes of these incidents at their core, and start us remembering God’s response to us as we sit in the pit:

 But I called on your name, Lord, from deep within the pit. You heard me when I cried, “Listen to my pleading! Hear my cry for help!” Yes, you came when I called; you told me, “Do not fear.”

Lamentations 3:55-57 NLT

People of God, this is our mission. So let us move to make “an equal and opposite reaction” that this world will not soon forget. Amen.