HEELCATCHER

Another mass shooting. 59 dead. Over 500 wounded.

You simply can’t wrap your mind around it.

One tragic death radically changes the lives of countless people. Spouses gone. Fathers and mothers killed. Brothers and sisters taken away. Friends lost.

The repercussions are almost endless. The ripples touch generations to come.

The responses are predictable. Gun control. Mental health. Politics. Religion. Posturing. Blameshifting. Speculating.

Everyone has an opinion. Social media provides the platform. Divisions increase. Animosity grows. But the loss remains.

In the wake of such a senseless, sickening tragedy, prayer is the appropriate response. Though many dismiss prayer as a waste of time, there are times when all we can do is pray.

Prayer is a way of saying…that this tragedy is beyond comprehension, that there are some things outside our control, that the loss is real, that our hearts are knit together with those suffering, that the only comfort for those who have lost loved ones is for there to be life, purpose, and meaning outside this cruel world.

Prayer humbles us, unites us, opens us up to the strength and grace of God.

There is a time for discourse. A time for civil debate. But we must avoid the tendency to throw out simple, all-encompassing solutions. Banning certain types of guns is a worthy discussion but an honest conversation must also include the breakdown of the family, the abdication of fatherhood, the promulgation of violence as entertainment, the loss of respect for human life, the glorification of lawlessness, the increase of anxiety and depression, the widespread use of drugs, a postmodern culture where “everyone does what is right in their own eyes,” and the simple evil of the human heart.

But now is not the time to argue.

Now is not the time to retreat to our ideological corners to cast stones at one another.

Now is the time to pray.

To acknowledge our humanity.

To weep with those who weep.

To realize our weakness and mortality.

To wrestle with suffering.

To ask for God’s wisdom.

To seek God’s comfort.

To receive God’s grace.

An unwillingness to bend the knee before God reveals a mind convinced that it has all the answers. A heart hardened in self-sufficiency. A will determined not to yield.

As Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in the midst of the devastation and division of the Civil War.

We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

A culture too proud to pray soon becomes too self-focused to care.

So humble yourself and pray.

Pray for those who are injured.

Pray for those fighting for their lives.

Pray for those mourning the loss of loved ones.

Pray for Las Vegas.

Pray for our nation.

Pray that once again, in the face of tragedy, we will be one nation under God.

I fight tears.

I am not sure why.

There is something that feels dangerous about tears. Uncontrollable. You fear that if you start you may not be able to stop.

But when the tears come, it has a way of cleansing my soul. Reminding me that I am still human. That my heart is not numb…cold…dead.

This has been a hard week.

Sitting at the bedside of a woman who has wasted away because of cancer. Face sunken. Hair gone. Body reduced to skin and bones. You can't run away from the reality of death. It is ugly…cruel…unstoppable. Yet she manages a smile while I read Scripture.

Jesus is the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for His sheep. He knows His sheep by name and no one can snatch them out of His hand.

She looks up with eyes that know her time is near. And she tries to sing.

My heart breaks.

A few hours later she is gone.

Before I can stop to process the day, another tragedy hits.

A husband, father, and new grandfather. A man who beams joy when you see him. A man who has faced the harsh realities of life…the loss of everything in a flood, financial difficulties, uncertainties…with grace and a smile.

Missing. Then found. Robbed. Shot. Killed.

While sitting alone in a park journaling.

Journaling. Thinking. Reflecting. Praying.

But seen as a target by those without regard for life.

A family shocked, shaken, grieving.

How do you process this? Where do you go?

The world is unsafe. We are vulnerable.

Do you run and hide?

Shake your fist at the world? At others? At God?

Or do you weep?

The tears come at odd times. One moment you are speaking. The next you are grieving…weeping…crying.

But somehow in the tears there is a sense of relief. Release. Peace.

Perhaps it is our fighting of tears that leads to our fighting with one another.

We don't know how to lament. Anger feels more natural. More appropriate. More powerful.

We fight tears because we fight our own weakness. Our mortality. Our vulnerability.

But we are weak. We are mortal. We are vulnerable.

Who are we kidding? Ourselves?

Tears remind us of reality. They remind us that life is short. That evil exists. That suffering happens. That something is desperately wrong with this world.

Tears point us to hope.

We sorrow but not as others who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

We have a hope that transcends the grave, of a coming kingdom, of a coming King.

We have a Savior that has entered our world, shared our suffering, carried our sin, defeated our death.

A Savior who wept…and one day will wipe away our tears.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

My oldest son is home from college. We are all together again as a family. Sitting around the dinner table, the stories begin to flow. Each of us has a story. Memories. Mostly funny. Sometimes embarrassing. But all of them told in a way that is intended to make us laugh, connect, and remember.

After the stories are told, our family feels closer…tighter…stronger.

That is the power of stories.

What we remember. How we remember. And how we tell them.

It is our stories that shape us, form us, give us identity…as individuals, married couples, families, churches, communities, and even nations.

I think of a newspaper.

There are literally a million stories that happen every day but the newspaper picks a few stories to tell. And those stories have a way of shaping how we view the world around us.

I think about my own life.

I am almost 49. Just doing the math, I have lived approximately 17850 days (give or take a few days because I don't have time to figure out leap years). If you guesstimate that an average day includes at least 100 different events, then there are probably two million possible stories that I could remember in my life. But I only remember a limited number. I could call these the "significant events" of my life but they are also the events that I have revisited in my mind, that I have interpreted, and that I have retold…to myself and probably to others…often with pictures, both real and in my imagination.

These are the stories that shape me, that become the basis of how I view myself, my life, and others in my life.

Think about your own life, your marriage, your family, your church, your community. What stories do you remember? What stories do you revisit? What stories do you tell? Whatever they are, they have shaped you and often form the basis of your identity.

So it is imperative that we remember well.

Not only remember well but interpret well.

Some memories can't be forgotten. Some stories have to be told. But how we remember, how we interpret, and how we tell them is up to us.

The Bible is full of stories, events in the history of humanity that have been chosen to be told.

The Bible does not ignore difficult, tragic stories. In fact, many are bothered by the "R-rated" nature and graphic stories of sacred Scripture.

But the Bible couches every story in a bigger story. Even the most sordid and shocking are remembered, interpreted, and told in a certain way…a redemptive way. They are meant to point to something bigger. They are meant to create a thirst for something better. They are meant to lift our eyes to something more beautiful.

The four Gospels all lead up to and focus on one story. The story of an innocent Man being falsely accused, betrayed, abandoned, beaten, and crucified, the most shameful and painful way that the Romans could devise for a man to die.

An odd story to remember and to tell.

Unless one sees it and interprets it within the bigger story.

The story of redemption.

The story of a love that cannot be fathomed.

The story of a God who entered our world to die for us and to graft us into His story.

And that's the story that all of us should tell.