Love lives in the world and can save us from hate

January's about out the door. I'm always glad to get through it. It's had ups and downs — the same as every month. But for some reason they feel different in January. Like a frozen landscape that needs a spring thaw.

I recently read a humbling story of getting through a very hard time, written by a daughter whose mother was killed in the Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting a few years ago. A Bible study gathering at an AME (African Methodist Episcopal) church — I think the very one I attended while visiting that city. I especially remember the friendliness of the ladies in their colorful hats.

This daughter Sharon, a hospital chaplain, often helped people encompassed by trauma. Now it was her turn. She was attending the shooter's trial — going to have to confront the young man who had killed her mother and eight others. Who sat with them around their study table for an hour until they bowed their heads to pray, and then pulled out a semiautomatic.

The worst of it was in jail he'd written he'd like to make it “crystal clear” that he had no regrets, no sorrow for the “innocent people I killed.” A frozen landscape if there ever was one.

Sharon struggled the day it came her turn to speak to him after a jury found him “guilty on all counts.” She didn't want to feed his hate crime with more hate. She said, “I wanted to hold on to my faith, hold fast to God, but it was so hard.”

He wouldn't look at her, but she knew he was listening. “I pray,” she told him, “that before your life is over, you will call on the name of Jesus for mercy.”

Still it took Sharon more time to find peace. She'd once heard a preacher say “forgiveness should be instant,” but she knew different. Having fought depression she was aware buried anger was “too dangerous.” She would have to face her feelings before she could truly forgive.

“I could move forward only with God's help,” she said. She kept praying and working toward forgiveness. And the day arrived when the thaw happened. She was in church and it was as if she heard God say, “Okay, it's time. You've done all the work. You're ready to get past all this anger, this hurt.”

Sharon felt a heavy burden lift from her. She let it go. Her mother's “goodness and love did not die with her” but continued to live through her, Sharon.

Her spring arrived when she understood, “Love lives in the world, and it can save us from hate.”