Broken Hearts
For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. (Matthew 15:19 ESV)
I do not even remotely want to talk about this issue. It has been a week now since this young man murdered his mother and more than two dozen others, mostly children.
Evil is still evil regardless of all the issues that brought this about, those issues of anger that flamed to a level of rage and murder. All of these lives snuffed out like a candle. All of the promises of life…simply gone. How do we even begin to get our minds around events so incomprehensible, so evil?
Pastor Evans commented this week, “Christ is God’s ultimate answer to everything in life that would break our hearts.” The ultimate answer in all of this is Christ; Jesus is God’s answer for our sin and will answer the need for total re-creation at the end of this age. We must simply stay on message, that this world is broken in rebellion and sin and that sin left unchecked does great evil. The answer for this evil is Christ’s redemption of bitter angry hearts. Taking those hearts to change them, making them new, making them kind, and making them gentle.
Please allow me to change course slightly for there is another side of all of this I wish to touch on: those parents and family who survive. I lost a child suddenly to an accident, not violence. I cannot address the issue of the suffering as a result of such evil but I do understand the suffering of sudden, overwhelming loss. These parents never suspected that this would be the last time they saw these children alive. The same holds true for spouses and other family members of the teachers. How they wish, to a person, they had hugged all the more and made clear and plain their love for these beloved ones. The way for that is shut.
They are only now beginning to touch the agony of no closure, of no last words, of no more fun or tender times. For now, the way is shut.
This day I would ask you to pray for these surviving parents and family members, that God in His mercy would grant them comfort. He is the God of all comfort. These children are now safe, safer than they would ever be in this world but these parents and family, their suffering has barely begun. Pray for their comforting in this time. They are the bruised reeds and smoking flax spoken of by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 42. These are the ones Christ came to heal. Their hope in this world may be bruised and broken, the flame of their faith extinguished, pray for these this day.
God have mercy; Christ have mercy.