“I came not to send peace, but the sword” Mt 10:34
Send the sword? I don’t think there is any doubt that Jesus was not pro violence, so what is this supposed to mean?
We are to bring the sword not to others but to ourselves. Jesus came to save us all, He cleared the way, He is the Way, but as we fumble with the gift of our freewill, we screw up. We turn from Him and toward the world, the kingdom of the father of lies.
So He brought the sword, the sword of truth. There is a battle going on, it is not nation against nation, brother against brother, it is inside us, inside me, the battle between the man I am meant to be and the man that I am. The sword is in my mind, in my heart, it is the sword of truth, of rightness, the sword that allows me to fight against the desires of the world. Every day I wake and do battle, I have to decide which side of the line in the sand I am going to stand.
Each of us has to fight this battle. It is easy to not fight, to take the wide road; it takes honor, courage and love to fight the battle every day, to choose the narrow path. Until we win this battle inside ourselves, we will battle with each other.
