Life is to be so much more than getting through each day. Love is to be so much more than how good someone else makes me feel. Relationship is to be so much more than me naming you as family or as a friend.
Angola, Indiana, lost four young lives this weekend. Four vibrant, charming, successful, quality high school seniors were killed on their way home from spring break. Another young man, 21, from Alabama, crossed the median on I-65 and struck the boys head on, killing all four of them and himself.
Angola is transformed. This little community has rallied around these families. Facebook is abuzz with hurting teens reaching out to the families and to each other. Ecumenical services are overrun. Other communities are sending flowers, trays of snacks, and support to the high school. It seems that everybody in this county knew one of these four boys in some way or another.
I love how the Lord takes tragedy and uses it to build community, to build relationships, to build people. Lord, make it last. Help us to remember these boys and the closeness that their deaths brought to us. Help us to remember the fragility of life that is so tangible today. Help us to make permanent the changes that we are all claiming because of the pain we feel.
Father, help the hurting. When they reach out in the dark, grab their hands, mend their broken hearts and fill their emptied spirits with your love, your grace, your forgiveness. Bring us all to a new sense of repentance. Bring us all to a new sense of need. Use this to make us all better at love, better at relationship. Draw souls unto yourself and bring revival, Lord.
Written by Isaiah, read by Jesus in the temple, leaned upon today:
"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified." Isaiah 61: 1-3.
Oh, Father, make it so.
0 comments:
Post a Comment