This blog has woven past experiences with current ones of my life here in Spain. However, today's reflection is more of what is going on right now, right here, and how in the midst of it, I am looking to make sense of it with the lens of the Ancient Prayer, The Lord's Prayer. Many of you who read this have confessed to me that you do not believe as I do, and that's ok, but I find the need to express these thoughts below and I invite you to reflect on them with me.

 One of the most powerful pieces of Scripture for me is when Jesus responds to the question how do we pray? The ancient words go something like this

Our Father, who lives in heaven, holy is your name.

May your kingdom come, and your will be done, here on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us our daily bread. Help us to forgive others as you have forgiven us. Don't let us fall into temptation,  but! Deliver us from Evil.

For yours is the kingdom, all the power, and all the glory are yours. Amen

Praise, petition for physical, emotional and spiritual help and acknowledgment that God is bigger than us. That is the essence of this prayer.

As a teenager and later Bible school student, the old words never made any sense. But the longer I live, the more they do.

In pandemic, after we lost everything, we prayed, give us our daily bread.  We were in debt, no hope for making money, small amount of savings dwindling, and daily we prayed this. And every day, every week, we saw our daily needs provided for.

And as that world of before Covid crumbled, and we moved into what this world now contains, the cry for emotional strength has been a constant. Help us to forgive those who don't know what they did, or even if they do know what they did. To forgive and move on is the most difficult and yet powerful act we as humans can do in showing love to our fellow man. It is what we spend hours doing, money in therapy or booze or addictions to try and remove from our front of our thinking. Our current obsession with healing is because we know we need it, and frankly, without God, it is impossible. Don't get me wrong, we have been given tools in order to do so,  and thusly are made responsible to use them, but we know that without a doubt, this tools are granted to us from God.

But there comes a point where the daily bread can be there, and the process of emotional healing functioning, and we can wake up feeling better than the past, but there is another external factor.

Evil.

Words have been written, books have come and gone, movies and theater and yes even the Saturday night comedy shows and reels and internet and even the game night in your home with your friends have show us how subtle and horrible and distinct evil was, is and can be.

There are many of us, in all the religions, faiths, cults, sects, or nothing, that want good.

We want kindness patience compassion self-control good food good wine good sleep good sex good relationships good family and the run on list goes on and on and on.

But what interrupts all of these things and the list of good things that we could conjure up, is evil.

It could be acts of evil like war homicide corruption genocide dictatorship bombing innocent people and property and more.

It could be pain disease and eventual death death.

It could be old behaviors and attitudes like racism sexism patriarchy and other controlling behaviors.

Or it could be laws broken and twisted for the greater evil at work.

The reason I haven't used commas or ands is that sometimes its not just one thing, but all these things sometimes run together and form the perfect storm.

And the reason for this long, rambling post about evil, is that even though we acknowledge that it is always present, there seems to be a growing indifference to the evil that is expanding greatly.

My blog and my social media is not political. My social media is about life and work and my blog is about my wanderings in a different part of the world other than my own and how I see my faith evolving as I live further and further away from where I came from.

And where and when I came from, this evil that we see today, was not tolerated, or perhaps it was just a lot better hidden. I was taught kindness, not cruelty, compassion and not indifference, empathy and not robot like movements.

The good news is that we can walk in the Spirit in love and joy, peace and patience, kindness and forgiveness, and when I see a ''Christian" world emerging that has shunned love and joy for hate and anger, peace and patience for conflict and impatience, kindness and forgiveness for cruelty and judgement, this movement is no longer Christ like and walking in the spirit.

We are, in order to show, who we are and who we believe in, to walk justly and love mercy, take care of the widow the orphan the sick the oppressed and the immigrant and sometimes all at of them are all together. And when we stop doing this, our faith has become no more than a bell making noise or as most evangelicals hate when the word is used, a religion.

The cruelty stops here. I will not walk in it, and I will not tolerate it. If those I know are cruel and hateful and angry towards a people group a sexual orientation and seek conflict and judgement and cruelty for cruelty's sake, I'm done. I will not fall into the temptation of Christian Nationalism that thinks that by political means, we get people into heaven.

I think there so many people that have "deconstructed" from their religious upbringings and mostly its because they started to see the vile, bitter, horrible hate racism sexism and conflict within their organizations and decided I'm done.

But with a little time and distance, they realized it was the organization, the institution, the evil that lurked around the Sunday School corner dressed as an angel of light. All the fear we were taught that evil was lurking with us, is now justified, as we see swirling around us.

I see you. I understand. We have been kicked down, spat it, thrown out of and belittled as well. We have been gaslighted, pressed down, and in the end, the temptation is to join evil. 

To hate.

To scorn.

To not forgive.

To hold grudges.

To lose our humanity and empathy to the ease and control of power and evil.

This is what when we have been abused, is our temptation, is to fall into evil and fall into the same paths of the ones who have been evil towards us. I urge you, to pray our daily prayer together, deliver us from evil.

Whether you believe in God, he or she or it or not, pray it with me. As evil presses in and robs our joy and peace, 

pray it with me

 Breath in and out with me,

 and together, may we see instead of the victory of evil, the gracious peace of His Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. May we see reconciliation, a topic for another day.

In the words of an old book, say with me.

 The world goes not well. But the Kingdom comes.