A Holy Interruption

I wanted to write to you this week to help give you some response to the state of the world. I wanted to talk about the unjust removal of an unjust dictator in Venezuela and put a theological spin on the old adage, “two wrongs don’t make a right.” I wanted to give you a hot take from scripture that you’d never heard before and impress upon you the importance of vigilance in the pursuit of love and peace and justice. I wanted to write something that sprang off of the page and into your hearts and made your synapses fire in brand new ways so that you would be fired up and ready to fight whatever comes next. I wanted to do all of that and more…but I got distracted.

What distracted me wasn’t my phone or an email or some social media post that sent me down a rabbit hole of anxiety and absolutisms…it was a pile of drawings on my desk. Beautiful artwork that one of our children had colored and created during worship this past Sunday and then saw fit to give me. And no matter how hard I tried to write about the transgressions of the U.S. government or the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, that pile of artwork kept causing my eyes and my heart to drift.

At that moment I realized something: This wasn’t a distraction. It was a summons. Those drawings—thick with crayon, wildly colored, unconcerned with staying in the lines—were made by a child sitting among us while we sang and prayed and tried, in our adult ways, to make sense of the world. They weren’t commentary on geopolitics or theology. They weren’t strategic. They weren’t efficient. They were an offering. A gift. A small act of trust.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how little that kind of trust is rewarded right now. After all, we are living in a moment that tells us urgency is everything. That if we are not outraged, we are complicit. That if we are not sharp, fast, and loud, we are failing. Even love has been weaponized—measured by how fast we respond and how clearly we draw the line between good people and bad ones.

But the way of Jesus has never been impressed by speed or certainty. Time and again our sacred stories demonstrate Jesus’ refusal of shortcuts–his refusal to trade one kind of harm for another just because the cause feels right. Jesus chose the slower, intentional work of paying attention, of staying close, and receiving what’s offered—especially from children.

That pile of artwork on my desk reminded me that love doesn’t always look like maintaining a state of hypervigilance. Sometimes it looks like paying attention to what’s right in front of us. Like letting ourselves be interrupted. Like not turning every day or every moment into some referendum on our moral worth.

None of this means we stop caring about injustice. It just means we remember how we care matters just as much as that we care. The truth is two wrongs don’t make a right—not because it’s a catchy phrase, but because violence, coercion, and domination deform everyone they touch, even when they’re justified as liberation. Like Jesus’ work of living into the kingdom of God here and now, our own work of love and justice has to be shaped by the world we are trying to build, not just the one we are trying to tear down.

So this week, instead of a hot take, I offer you a holy interruption–an invitation to pay attention to what keeps pulling your eyes and your heart away from the noise. Notice the small, human things that refuse to be optimized. Let them remind you what we are actually protecting. Let them slow you down just enough to remember that the goal is not to win—but to remain human.

The truth is, sometimes the most faithful response to the state of the world is not another argument or another declarative statement posted on social media. Sometimes it’s a ride to an appointment, a text to check in on someone who hasn’t been around much lately, or a stack of crayon drawings slipped into an unsuspecting hand—quietly saying, without words: This is still worth it.

On the journey with you,
Pr. Melissa

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