It’s Sunday and I wanted to get around it. I longed to side-step the whole matter.
It’s the Lord’s Day and I desired to think on other things. I had hoped my mind’s focus would be on God’s beautiful Heaven and not this ugly earth.
Our call to gather for worship falls on this morning’s calendar and I really wanted to press on while pushing it out of my mind. It felt like I was trying to stop the ocean’s tides.
I should be focused solely on proclaiming my text from Isaiah 9 this morning, the text about the birth of a child…but instead I’m having a heard time forgetting about the deaths of twenty other children and six adults.
So instead of faking it and pretending I’m somewhere other than where I am in my mind I leave us with some blunt truth that fully explains the bottom line about why a young man murdered 26 people in a Connecticut school on Friday.
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy…” – John 10:10(a)
It is also very important that I remind us of this, however: Death will never be the end of the story. Death cannot be ignored and we must always remember that it is a precursor to the greater reality, the truth of resurrection. That ancient thief sent his servant to fill his bag with the lives of children. Gunshots rang out, terror commenced, blood was shed, hearts were crushed, parents were devastated and thief held the bag and laughed with diabolic pleasure.
Yet when he opened that bag to take a peek inside, to rejoice over the bounty his servant had brought him… it was empty. Death proved again to be incapable of having the last word because Jesus finished John 10:10(a) above with John 10:10(b) below:
“…I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
Death is undeniable in these events we cannot push from our minds. I am grateful to have such strong assurance in my heart that those twenty children are with the Lord while we are left down here to seek sense in it all. I will weep with those who weep – and I have. I will rage against evil which has declared itself to be active in our nation again. I will search my own heart and life and hate the evil I find there the very most (if you don’t think you have any of your own you are mistaken). I will call upon the name of the Lord and ask Him to keep my heart affixed on a coming Kingdom wherein there shall never exist any pain, death, bloodshed or sorrow. Then I will choose to live for the King of that realm for another day. May His return be soon.
When you said yesterday, in your remarks regarding Newtown, Cn. that those
precious children are in heaven with God, your words cannot be more true.
The adults, we don’t know…only God knows but according to reports all the
adults were ‘good’ people. Reminds me again, ‘good’ is not enough…just
saved and forgiven is the only way. Again as I said…we don’t know. Only
God in his wisdom has allowed this to happen..and I trust him. I hope those
grieving parents and loved ones have the same trust.