The Bumper Sticker

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“Do not repay evil for evil or insult for insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, for to this you were called that you may inherit a blessing. For whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it.” 1 Peter 3:9-11

I once read somewhere that when opposing football players cursed Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow – an outspoken Christian athlete – in a game, he would respond with, “Bless you!”

What a great example of obeying Peter’s admonition not to return evil for evil, but instead give a blessing.

I saw another fabulous example of 1 Peter 3 the other day on a bumper sticker. While I often see crude and rude bumper stickers, this one instead read, “I hope something nice happens to you today.”

Wow! Isn’t that the essence of giving a blessing? Whereas a curse is a wish that something extremely awful happens to us using very explicit language to express it, this blessing wishes us just the opposite. It’s like saying, “I hope you win the lottery.” “I hope you sleep well tonight.” “I hope you get a promotion.”

I’ve become super sensitive to this concept of returning good for evil lately because I’m deeply involved in promoting my blog posts on Facebook. I use these promotions to introduce a broad audience to the concept of men’s team ministry to the widowed and single parents.

My most successful promoted post so far is one entitled “It’s Time for America’s Churches to Take Their Financial Responsibilities to Their Widows and Others Seriously.” The Facebook ad that promotes this post has been seen by 200,000 people, “liked” 5,500 times, and shared 2,100 times. The post itself has been read by 23,000 people and shared almost 10,000 times.

But the most fascinating stat to me is the number of comments that people have made on the ad: 899 to date and counting. (The post itself only has a few comments because readers are using the Facebook ad as their primary forum.)

But since the ad is to “anyone in the U.S. over the age of 18”, I get both Christians and non-Christians commenting on it. Some of those comments are hateful and crude. The result is that I spend a good amount of time skimming through the hundreds of comments and deleting the rude ones.

But I’m going to try a different tack. I’m going to give a blessing to these people who are trolling me online: “I hope something nice happens to you today, sir.” It will be interesting to see what happens.

Stay tuned.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry

Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.

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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom

and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.

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