The Dividing Wall

When one of my daughters was in college, she spent over three weeks in Zambia.
Since she was an education major she would be working with the children there.
She was both blessed by the people and was a blessing to them.
She came home forever changed.

I remember her stories.
I remember her description of the food.
I remember that she lost one of her Croc shoes in the Zambezi River.
I remember her astonishment at the beauty of Victoria Falls.

What I remember most was what she learned about prayer.
Mom, I was so humbled, she began as she tried to explain.
The people have nothing, yet they are so incredibly thankful.
Their prayers put me to shame.

Confident that was not their intent; the prayers of the people touched her deeply.
They thank God for waking them up in the morning.
They thank God that they can stand on two legs.
They thank God for the food in their cupboard, and Mom, they have very little food.

They live a life of gratitude; I felt like my prayer life fell so short in comparison.
I just listened to her.
There was nothing to say in response.
God was teaching her something through the Zambian people and I would not interfere.

I thought of the lessons she learned and has since carried with her as I read a news story.
It is the story of a lion named Cecil, the star of a Zimbabwe national park.
Cecil had been lured out of the park and killed by an American bow hunter.
A Minnesota dentist is the hunter responsible for the death of the lion.

I read an Associated Press report on the incident that surprised me.

While the death of a protected lion in Zimbabwe has caused outrage in the United States… most in Zimbabwe expressed a degree of bafflement over the concern.

I read further.

“It’s so cruel, but I don’t understand the whole fuss, there are so many pressing issues in Zimbabwe — we have water shortages, no electricity and no jobs — yet people are making noise about a lion?” said Eunice Vhunise, a Harare resident. “I saw Cecil once when I visited the game park. I will probably miss him. But honestly the attention is just too much.”

Other comments of the Zimbabwe people echoed her sentiment.
People said that they were too busy trying to make a living to care about it.
Many companies have closed in Zimbabwe; only two thirds of the population is working.
There are water and electricity shortages.

Lions are needed to bring in tourism, one resident said.
The man should be fined with the money going towards animal conservation.
It is very sad that the American chose to travel all the way to kill our animals.
Here in the United States there is online anger and protests at his dental clinic.

However another battle rages.
The news about the death of the lion is being used as a backdrop for another story.
It is a story about the killing of the unborn.
People are angry that a lion is getting all the attention while the babies get none.

The rhetoric can be hateful on both sides.
The volume has been turned up so that no one is really hearing the other person.
There is a lot of yelling and finger pointing.
There is a lot of accusation going over the fence.

The fence.
The fence that demands you take sides.
The fence that keeps people in their comfort zones.
The fence that allows words to be thrown as spears towards another.

That fence.
The fence that should be broken down if indeed anyone really cares to listen to another.
The din is so loud that the basic argument is forgotten.
We have a blatant disregard for life.

We live in a society where everything is expendable.
We live in a society where it is easier to throw away than to repair.
We live in a society of expediency and self-centered-ness.
We live in this society.

While we are here, we must love and protect the weak.
We have forgotten.
We have become self-made men and women.
We have no time for the least of these.

Killing anything, just because, should cause an outrage.
We scream when tusks of elephants are sold for the ivory.
We protest when endangered turtles are at the mercy of a builder near their habitat.
But where is our outrage when parts of a human baby are dissected and sold for profit?

I do not understand the selective-ness of the outrage.
I do not understand why it is wrong here and right there.
I do not understand how value can be placed more heavily on one thing than another.
I do not understand.

For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility. (Ephesians 2:14-16)

Jesus is our peace.
Jesus has destroyed the barrier.
Jesus has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility.
Jesus has reconciled all of this two-sided-ness through the cross.

We have forgotten.
We stand on our side of the fence and we shout.
We stand on our side of the fence and we fail to listen.
We stand on our side of the fence and we point to the one who stands across from us.

We compare lions and babies.
We forget.
We protest the killing of animals.
We turn our heads the other way when a baby is murdered in the womb.

God is the Creator.
We are the Creatures.
If anyone had a reason to yell, it should be God with how we have dismissed Him.
If anyone has a reason point a finger and say, Sinner, it is God.

However, God does not yell.
But God did speak.
He spoke the world into existence and breathed into man and woman the gift of life.
It is God’s breath we carry around inside us.

We have been given grace.
Grace that we must extend to others as it has been given to us.
We must cherish life because it is a God-given gift.
Yet we treat the gift of Life and the gift of Grace as cheap, disposable, and inconvenient.

We will lose the argument if we continue to yell and point fingers.
We, who are in Christ, should know better.
We must bring others to the foot of the cross.
Only then will the dividing line be removed.

Can you hear the sound of silence as we listen to Him calling us?
Can you see the linguistic spears being laid down?
Can you see a Hand being extended to you?
That nail-scarred Hand reaches over the fence.

The dividing wall has crumbled.
The silence is deafening.