Well, there’s been another school shooting. Our kids are braver than us parents, running toward the shooter, sacrificing their own life for a friend. It can only remind me of Jesus, who laid his life down for mine.
The One who calms the seas and spins the Heavens in orbit, He is the God who promises, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
“In this world you will have trouble, I leave you my peace.”
This is the only promise from the only reliable Promiser. No gun control, metal detectors, push for mental health awareness, mindful breathing, emphasis on being kind. No tattoos of love on our wrists are enough. They are drops in the bucket, bandages on a severed artery. It is not enough.
Only He is enough. The Author of life who opens doors and closes chapters and writes our history and future. We cry out to Him for mercy in our time of need, and he responds. We fall prostrate before a King who cares, who in every way understands the evil of man, who rescues us not with muscle and brute force, but with a promise of new life if we repent of our self idolatry. The only way to turn to Him is to turn away from our human nature, our penchant to hate, point fingers, reason in circles, cast blame.
When a school shooting happens, we bleed questions, why, O God? We ignore the truth spoken in the Bible–that man is a hopeless wreck, and there is only one name under Heaven by which we must be saved: Jesus.
We are unstable in every way, distracted thinkers. We rely on the media to bring us stories of hope when they only exploit pain. There is no hope, no salve for the sting of death–except a risen Savior. Yet we crane our necks, worried more about what people think than fixing our eyes on Him. We shrug our shoulders in the middle of the horror–not much I can do about it. We pick up the remote control and flip from CNN back to Game of Thrones.
This is the frailty of our flesh: we look to escape before we ever find courage to engage. We wait like sitting ducks, hoping for this life to get better without ever naming an enemy for fear of being too politically incorrect. We enamor ourselves with the raunchiest, most violent, obsessively coarse entertainment and refuse to draw any correlation between our addictions and the depravity of men.
We have failed our kids. We are the wicked ones, because we offer our children no hope of breaking our own chains. Our promises to keep them safe are fickle.
Friend, there is still an anchor for the soul. The world is wasting away, but inwardly we are being renewed day by day–this is the hope of the believer.
It might be a timid, wobbly foot forward, baby steps to the Savior. He isn’t above running to you and snatching you up in His arms.
