CCHF Shalom Challenge Day 15: “Apparently the divorce happened because they…”
| Today’s challenge: Kill machlokes with silence 🤐 |
| Transcript |
| Somehow the pan with oil stayed on the fire too long and then… Disaster struck. “AAAH, FIRE! Quick, I need some liquid to put it out!!” yelled Mrs. Cohen. Her young son quickly grabbed the first bottle he could find and poured a bottle of lighter fuel on the fire. Probably not the best way to put out a fire. Machlokes is fire. You take a relationship, let it burn under the fire of machlokes for a while… and watch as a perfectly good relationship is incinerated. ❓ But what’s the fuel of machlokes? ❓ What makes it burn longer, harder? Loshon hora. Loshon hora is gasoline that turns small flames of discontent into a roaring wildfire that can lay waste to careers and friendships. 🔥 As one person in a machlokes spreads loshon hora against another, it becomes public knowledge. 🔥 Then, the negative feelings that had been quietly stored in a person heart… grow into facts that friends and family will rally around, take sides, and become entrenched in positions that grow hatred. A small mistake or comment blows up into uncontrollable war… only because it was fanned to life by words. But imagine if you decide: 🤐 “I will not speak about this machlokes. No matter what.” Ever put out a candle by covering it with a glass? With no oxygen, the flame flickers… wavers… dies. It sounds far-fetched but this is the truth: If you extinguish the loshon hora that fuels the machlokes, the machlokes will soon die. Tonight is Purim. We know that the great salvation of Purim came because of the achdus, the unity of Klal Yisrael at that time. By joining the Shalom Challenge – you too have chosen to focus on achdus now. May our efforts at unity bring us the greatest yeshuah of all, the coming of the Geulah. |