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Good morning.

I don’t know why, but I’m regularly surprised by the level of my own prejudice. 

Honestly, I think I’m open to new ideas and accepting of others.  But  meeting  Sonya as regularly as I do   I knew what she was going to say before I even arrived. True as it might be it was the familiar story about how hard her life had been as a result of a terrible incident many years ago.

But on this occasion she spoke with the quiet authority of the deeply injured.  Her father had been killed.  Worst of all, he had died at the hands of those who had been his neighbours – even friends.  That’s what happens in civil war!  Good people seem to be overtaken by a frenzy of evil and the result is terror.

It had all happened so long ago.  60 – perhaps 70 years ago.  But she told the story as if it was yesterday.   

I bitterly regretted my preconceptions of her.

I regretted that her life had been so disfigured by what had happened.  There seemed to be no end to the suffering that had shaped her.

And I regretted that it need not be like that, even now. 

Churches are still in the wonderful season of Easter.  Christians believe that there’s no suffering or prejudice that cannot be overcome.   The empty tomb demonstrates that ultimately God will not let human beings be limited in this way.

So, forgiving God, show me my prejudice and the old wounds I like to cultivate.  Help me to let them go, to live again and let others live.  Amen.