“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21)
Ah, I love today’s passage from Romans, with all its pointed little nuggets of instruction for living well. It was hard to pick just one, when they’re all so good. Seems to me you could sit and meditate on each of these verses all day long all by itself!
But I like the way this one exhorts us to action in response to evil, instead of the easier and more tempting option of pulling into our safe shells. In battle terms, it’s not telling you to simply stay on the defensive, huddle in your fortress and keep evil at bay with a few well-placed arrows. It’s telling you to sally forth on the offensive, right into the battlefield, and win back the ground that evil is taking.
Of course, using the correct weapon (“good”) is key here. There are a lot of well-meaning people who somehow get the idea that they are somehow justified in combating evil WITH evil. It starts, for example, when we’re little, thinking that slapping the little sister who took our toy is going to somehow “solve” the problem. When we’re adults, we justify: “I can make a snide/gossipy/sarcastic/hurtful remark about THAT person behind their back, because they did THIS to me!” It actually multiplies the problem instead of eradicating it, but that’s where Satan too often has us blinded and fooled.
Let’s take the challenge of this verse and not let him get by with that anymore!
P.S. See this original post for info about this photo challenge and more about this reading plan I’m using this summer for the book of Romans (and I’d love to have you join in!)!
About the photo: Look what I found while picking strawberries!
We’ve seen them other years, stopping very briefly on their way to other destinations or merely flying over—but this year, two (and sometimes three) lingered for weeks. The deep-throated trombone of their voices was an exotic addition to our usual local symphony, putting the normally dominate swan trumpeting to shame, and for awhile, they would even sound off like clockwork around 5 AM every morning. Who needs an alarm clock, my husband and I would mumble groggily to each other, when you have sandhill cranes in your back yard?
Frustrating as it was to have my designs foiled time after time, I had to begrudgingly admire these giant fowl’s sense of awareness though. It reminded me of the sobering topic we’ve been studying on Wednesday nights at church, and in particular, this verse:
I thought it was high time a robin put in an appearance, both in my yard and on this blog, but they took their sweet time this year. I was hearing all sorts of sightings reported by friends and family, and I was seriously beginning to wonder if these little harbingers* of springtime were even going to show me their faces this year. And if they didn’t, would it even really be spring? I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that robins are about as quintessential to the advent of spring as pussy willows.
I almost missed him there on the ground. Amidst the bark and leaves, the neutral shades of his feathers had blended in so well I literally almost stepped on him. Then, when I did notice him just in time, I wondered if something was wrong with him. Surely he would have flown away sooner otherwise? But I think he wanted his picture taken. I got within three inches with my camera before he finally took flight. Lucky for me, he seemed quite unafraid of the big black lens!
“Look, Mommy, it’s an ostrich!” cried my oldest daughter excitedly from the window.
I’ve heard him call the question distinctively across the lake at dusk before. Or sometimes its from the swamp along the winding stream bed across the field.
I must say that reading E.B. White’s whimsical classic, “The Trumpet of the Swan”, as a young girl did little to prepare me for hearing the real trumpet of a swan for the first time. Up until I got married, I had barely even seen a swan in the wild, let alone heard one. I thought it would be something like the honking of the Canadian geese that always flew over my childhood home in the spring and fall. I had no idea.
Then, I got married and moved here—and the swans suddenly became an integral part of our lives. The first spring, we watched them perform their spectacular mating dances on the river outside of the front windows of the little resort cabin we called a temporary home. They showed up at our next home, too, where they nested on the lake our neighbors had access to. We never actually saw them, but the sound of their great beating wings and calls echoed over to us tantalizingly all summer long. And then we moved to our current home, and soon learned, to our great delight, that the little lake our farm bordered was the valiantly defended private nesting grounds of yet another pair of swans.
I stopped what I was doing and just listened for a few minutes, thrilling to the sound. The silence of winter was over; the trumpeting prelude to the grand symphony of spring had officially begun. It was glorious!
Rejoicing Hills 
