Woke up this morning to a post from a friend entitled "We
Are Better Than This," with a link to a new website, appropriately named www.wearebetterthanthis.com.  It's a really well-done website in memoriam
of the victims of a horrific crime committed here in NH last week.  Four teenage boys went into a random house
with machetes and knives and hacked a mother and daughter to pieces.  It was awful. 
It was beyond awful.  The mother
died, and the daughter is in stable condition after many hours of surgery.  Clearly this is an example of pure evil in
the world, and we are all in shock.

But we are NOT better than this.  This is what humanity is.  Left to our own devices, we as humans will
hack up our neighbors and light fire to houses. 
Without the light and hope of Jesus, we are a depraved race. 

We can look at these four teenagers and say, "Well, I would
never do something like that," and feel justified in ourselves.  But the truth is that we verbally and
emotionally hack people up all day.  That
cross look you gave the lady at work whom you despise.  The time you knew you were wrong, but blamed
the other person.  The simple act of
walking past a homeless person, pretending that they didn't exist.  We lie, we cheat, we steal joy from people
all day long...and think that because we didn't physically harm them that we are
somehow the righteous and just few.

I have a bad habit of walking through Walmart judging
people.  It's easy.  My default human setting is to look at others
and mentally point out all the ways in which I am better than them.  But one day I caught myself and asked Jesus
to help me see people the way he did. 
And I couldn't stop smiling.  I
said "hello" to people.  I made others
smile.  I had a wonderful afternoon.

But my source of happiness and joy was not myself.  I am an empty pit of despair and
anguish.  But with Jesus, I can be
overflowing with hope and love and joy.

We are not better than this. 
But Jesus is.  

Where does your strength, happiness and joy come from?