Today’s Scripture Reading (March 5, 2018): Philippians 1
Emma MacDonald knew what was coming next; it had happened so many times before. After the
Boston bombing, MacDonald had attended a vigil for those who had lost their
lives at the Boston Marathon. She watched as a young boy placed a flower down
during the vigil and immediately was overwhelmed with the emotion of the
moment. She was overwhelmed with the emotion of
the boy with the flower, overwhelmed by the emotion of those who had lost loved
ones and friends who had only come to the Marathon to run and to celebrate the
city, and she was overwhelmed with the thought of what some twisted person had
done to the city of Boston. She couldn’t help herself. She began to cry.
It was that moment that a photographer for
the Associated Press took her picture. After all, this raw pain was the reason
for the vigil. The tears of Emma MacDonald seemed to sum up the feelings of all
those gathered. It was a genuine response to tragedy and a moment that all
photographers hope to capture.
But this genuine moment in Boston became
something else. Emma MacDonald’s picture began cropping up in other places. It
was linked with other women of a similar age and appearance but were connected
with other terrorist events. The accusation, Emma MacDonald was a Crisis Actor
who traveled the world to manufacture emotion. And as soon as Emma MacDonald
heard about the tragedy at a High School in Parkland, Florida (February 2018)
she knew that her picture would appear again. And it did with the label Boston
along with the other young woman who carried the labels of Sandy Hook, Aurora,
and Parkland. But while the picture proposes that all are pictures of the same
woman, only one of them is Emma MacDonald. And every time she sees the
accusations, she feels violated as her genuine emotion is used for an illegitimate purpose.
Life is sometimes like that. Words are twisted so that they mean something that we
never intended. Sometimes it is for good, but often the effect seems to be
detrimental to what we want and what we believe.
Unlike Emma, for Paul, the subversion of his enemy’s purpose was actually working out in his favor. Paul was in
prison. There is no doubt that the purpose of the imprisonment was to stop Paul from
sharing what it was that he believed. But the actual effect of Paul’s
imprisonment was not achieving the purpose for which his accusers had hoped.
Instead of stopping Paul, Paul was able to preach the Gospel in front of
Governors and Kings. And even though he is
brought to Rome in chains, he was able to spread the message of the love
of God to the guards and anyone else who happened by. The purposes of his captors
were subverted, which was good for Paul, although bad for those who had placed
him in prison. The Gospel was being advanced
in spite of those who wanted to stop it.
And centuries later, we hold the proof in our hands.
Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, along with Philemon, were all written
while Paul was in prison, and might not have been
written if he had remained free. All stand as proof of Paul contention
that the Gospel was being advanced in
spite of Paul’s forced incarceration; that God was on the move and could work under any circumstances.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Philippians 2
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