Live Your Blessing February 10, 2026 Devotional

MATTHEW 5:39 | ³⁹ But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also,

We all have expectations about the way the world works. Violence begets violence. Competition breeds zero sum rivalry. History is written by the winners. Rulers set the rules. These expectations can harden into our minds as necessities, inevitable facts that cannot be avoided and must be obeyed. But this is an illusion. Acts of courageous blessing break the patterns and new possibilities arise.

Roland Fryer is an African American who as a youth saw MLK’s   strategy of non-violence as weakness. Then he came to see that   sustained non-violence in the face of aggression separates those seeking equality from those seeking chaos. It allows majorities to see the reality of repression, which in the case of the civil rights movement, was only justifiable to genuine segregationists. Media coverage could not focus on “threats to law and order” when protesters were non-violent. Unjustifiable repression of non-violent protesters demonstrated to white majorities the fundamental unfairness of segregation and inequality. Violence would have muddied the waters of moral clarity. MLK learned this excessive restraint from Jesus.

When have you forsworn a hard-core response to unfairness?

Gracious God,

Show me creative ways to change the patterns around me that create animosity and intransigence. Help me see that the reciprocal is not inevitable.
Amen.