Today’s passage is Matthew 14:1-14.
Herod decapitates John the Baptist to fulfill a promise to his mistress’s daughter who danced for him at a party. Her mother was angry at John for saying she should live with her husband, Herod’s brother, instead of with Herod.
When Herod heard of Jesus’ miracles, he thought Jesus was John come back to life. When Jesus learned of John’s death, he went away to grieve. When he returned he saw the multitude waiting for him, and he healed their sick.
Today I was told I had to speak to a mother of a boy at our school.
The boy is a problem because his mother is a bigger problem.
Her husband and family live in Busan but she lives in Seoul with her son so he can go to school here because she thinks the education is better in Seoul.
She is emotionally unstable and fixated on her son.
She believes no one understands the hardships of her little son at our school, his lack of friends because he’s weird which is a direct result of her smothering him with her hopes and fears and total lack of objectivity towards him.
The boy’s lack of social skills means he’s often in trouble, usually with older boys, who naturally use their bigger size and strength to retaliate against his bad behavior.
The mother takes it upon herself to remonstrate with the children who mistreat her son who, in her view, is never at fault, but always a totally innocent victim.
Last year I ordered her off school property and forbade her to come onto it for any reason because of her interference with school discipline and the complaints of other parents about her.
On the second day of school, her son got into a problem with an older boy and the mother waylaid the boy on his way home. Same old story.
Now I have to talk to her again. What I want to do is expel her son to get rid of her.
But because of my repentance over my expulsion of a boy last spring and my battle to restore him to the school, I apparently set a new standard of love and mercy, which I have now been asked to show to this crazy mother.
I must tell her that she cannot discipline any child in our school other than her own son.
But I must also apologize to her for wrongs she felt I and others committed against her last year.
I must also attempt to assure her that her son is not singled out by students or teachers for persecution.
And I must also try to explain to her that no child is special and above the rules in our school, not even hers. They’re kids.
All this must be done with God’s loving mercy to a woman who should be back in Busan with her husband and family instead of alone with her son in Seoul.
Like Herod, I thought the problem was solved last year when I did not allow the woman on school property.
But she found a way to cause the same problem off school property. I can’t kill problems. I have to invite Jesus into them for healing.
Lord, give me your heart, your mind and your spirit of love and mercy that I might bring them to this unhappy woman.
