This past week has demonstrated too vividly that people make stupid choices.
Life can be an adventure filled with lessons to learn or it can be a burden, filled with drudgery and inconveniences. I live, oftentimes, on the fence between these two. When faced with a issue or decision or challenge I can either embrace it to learn and grow or begrudge it, treating it like an imposition. A young man in Omaha treated life like a burden, imposed on him and selfishly he chose to end his life and take as many others with him.
Someone in Arvada, CO decided to lash out in anger and violence and take two lives. Two other men (details are still trickling in) for unknown reasons gunned down worshippers at New Life Church in Colorado Springs.
Choices.
What do we do with these acts of selfish violence? I can't explain them. I can only pray and ask for God's peace. I can ask for the ability to forgive. I can forgive. Or I can question God and ask why He didn't intervene, step in and protect those young people. Why did He allow this to happen? I don't know?
Other than being familiar with Youth With a Mission and New Life Church I have no stake in the outcome. But there are others, friends and family of the victims, who do and what they decide will direct their lives to come. My only recourse is to pray and lean not on my understanding but trust in His.
This is an insane world. People do insane things, thinking only of themselves. My faith is at a place where I say, Maranatha, come Lord, return!
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But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things -- trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones.
About Me
Followers
Cs Lewis books to be read 50th year
Chronicles of Narnia
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Silver Chair
The Horse and His Boy
The Magician's Nephew
The Last Battle
Space Trilogy
Out of the Silent Planet
Perelandra
That Hideous Strength
Pilgrim's Regress
The Great Divorce
The Four Loves
The Problem of Pain
Miracles
Mere Christianity
God in the Dock
The Weight of Glory
Till We Have Faces
The Screwtape Letters
A Grief Observed
Spirits in Bondage
The Abolition of Man
Reflections on Psalms
Surprised by Joy
9 comments:
brent was hit pretty hard by the shootings at ywam since we did his dts there. unfathomable, every time.
Our Denver MissionPlex is on heightened security today. Maybe all that means is that the front door is locked all day.
Thanks for checking in, Court and Marti. I was wondering what news your hearing, so close to the incidents
I am THANKFUL for the wisdom in large churches to have ARMED security!
I think I read that the "hero", the one that Stopped the shooter is a female...Good For Us!!
It is an interesting and alarming fact that these large mega-churches would have to have security guards. I agree with you klasieprof but it still doesn't set quite right with me at the same time. I can't deny that lives were spared because of her equipping. But is that the answer to the problem - everyone is armed in case some loon is armed and opens fire? I don't even know where to look for answers to such a question.
Luke 22.35-38 may give some guidance, Jesus told his disciples the world was a dangerous place, live and act accordingly- be will to defend yourselves and the defenseless- but with requisite force... (two swords, is enough...).
Given the givens of what happened at YWAM, and the world we live in, the high profile of New Life... I suspect wisdom is what we see, and not anything else.
grace...
Dave
I was thinking of that verse last night. I was also thinking of violence and what is it what it is not. Is defending yourself/others violence? Violence is such a negative word, I believe for good reason but defending yourself isn't negative.
I'm uncomfortable with guns only because I am ignorant. I've only fired a gun once in my life and the need for a gun in my life is totally foreign.
I've been working on my Bible Study and reading about God's sovereignty. Nothing happens to us that is out of God's control. God does for His glory and our good. The source I was reading gave a word of caution at the end of the chapter on God's sovereignty. It's tough stuff and should be read, studied and prayed about when life is relatively "normal". Our first priority in times of adversity is to trust God. This isn't always my first inclination. My prayer is that it would be for me and mine.
you make me giggle...a snort sometimes too...but let's not stay on that subject.
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