Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“When they heard these things, they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen…Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.”
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, April 30, 2022
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Someone once called me conceited to my face. I was ten years old and my arch nemesis called me out on my big ego. I was humiliated and enraged (because she was right) and all I could think of to do was hit her. As a rule-following teacher’s pet who was terrified of authority, violence was never something I would have even considered in the classroom. But hearing such a painful truth so directly delivered elicited an involuntary response.
People, the Jewish authorities weren’t ten years old. They were educated adults with societal responsibilities. They were the elites. Yet when confronted with the painful truth of their failure to follow God’s word, they reverted to adolescence and murdered a man en masse.
Maybe we never outgrow this need for security in our rightness. Painful truth is far more difficult to swallow than vindictive falsehood. In order to protect our fragile egos, we often revert to verbal violence like nasty retorts or return accusations, emotional violence like the silent treatment, and sometimes physical violence. Perhaps we could all be working on ways to pause and self-search before reacting to others.
How do I react when others speak uncomfortable truth to me?
