with a heavy heart

I remember the Pearl School shooting when I was a freshman in high school. I ended up being friends with a guy who lived through it, after meeting him at summer camp, and when we discussed it, a look of horror still came over his face although it was months after the event.

I remember Columbine, and my high school’s fears of the ever possible threat of an unstable teenager coming to school and doing the same sort of thing.

We would have bomb threat and emergency drills at least every couple of months, but it still seemed so distant.

When I left secondary school and went off to college, I left lots of these thoughts behind. But then my brother started University, and that same year, the VCU shooting occurred. followed by Aurora during this past summer and the horrible shooting in Scandinavia a year or so ago.

Now with a very heavy heart this terror has been visited on not only teenagers or random people in a movie theatre, but small children.

I don’t have super strong opinions about gun control…maybe because I see it as merely going for a symptom of the problem. I mean, we aren’t talking about a gun that accidentally went off around a school yesterday. or a child who got a hold of a gun and didn’t mean to hurt people. we aren’t talking about people who hunt or have guns for their protection, or even a thug with a bone to pick or revenge to visit on someone.

We are discussing an individual who some say was mentally ill, and who I say was clearly a vessel for an evil that has sought to destroy humanity since humanity has existed.

This to me is direct evidence of St. Paul’s discussion of “wrestling not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities, and spiritual wickedness in high places.”

I pray today for God’s peace and comfort. also for his calm. I cannot imagine the anxiety and fear that the surviving children and parents and teachers are going through. and for all of us—the reality that nothing is certain, death is never satisfied, and there is evil all around.

In addition, the fact that this is the season of advent–with our waiting expectantly on Christ and hoping in his return and making things new, I pray that we are able to do that. 

There really is just nothing more to say. 

 

you only get what you give, and sometimes you get way more than you deserve

that title is a bit of a mashup between the title of two songs from the bands Vertical Horizon and Third Day, respectively.

Of all the things I will miss about Philadelphia, the greatest thing will be my church. I feel like I hit the jackpot in every city I’ve lived in.

I miss Church of the Redeemer in Nashville still, but Liberti has become very near to my heart. 

in many ways both of these segments of the Family of God have contributed to my spiritual growth. 

they have and are teaching me about community in some of the most beautiful and painful ways.

And I am being reminded of God’s provision and care for me through the people I’m living out my faith with.

I just want to say that whenever I feel that it is not possible for God to show His love for me anymore than he already has, He somehow manages to exceed Himself. yet again.

I only hope that I can be available to let Him love others through me as lavishly as He has loved me through people.

and now, i’m going to bed. my head is revolting at the lights. pardon the sentences that end in prepositions or have comma splices. it’s the headache’s fault.