PASTOR’S PAGE
Dear Friends,
Grace to you and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We awoke this Tuesday morning as we went to sleep last night, with heavy hearts and pain in our souls. Once again the Innocent have been made the target of one person’s unreasoned and unfettered anger and grief. Our hearts are broken as we have learned of the deaths of five children.
How well the Psalmist knows the pain:
“Out of the Depths I cry to you, O Lord.
Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!”
- Psalm 130:1, 2
In a very real and profound sense this psalm begins, and is memorable, because it expresses the location and condition of our cry for help. “Out of the depths” describes the overwhelming ocean-like chaos that confronts human life with destruction, devastation, and death. The Latin rendering of this phrase is de profundis, meaning deep, intense or extreme. Thus our lament in this tragedy is profound, arising from the extreme depths of the soul beset by destructive and overwhelming chaos.
It is striking that the psalmist is convinced that God is somehow within earshot of our cry if not actually present in the depths! All the forces that oppose God, causing us to despair, are confronted by God in the very depths. God’s presence in every human experience is a force to be reckoned with. God will not abandon us, and has proven this on the cross where God in Jesus Christ experienced and overcame every power to hurt, reject or divide, and where Jesus himself cried out to God. There is no place or circumstance beyond God’s hearing, beyond God’s forgiving, loving and redeeming presence and power. “No,” writes the apostle Paul, “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us . . . neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” – Romans 8:37-39.
What then can we say about these days? Anger is a natural human _expression of grief. “Why me? Why her? How could he? I hate what he has done? How could God allow this to happen? O Lord, how long?” When grief and its resultant anger are recognized and released through prayer and within the loving community and thus entrusted to God, we find hope for tomorrow. When grief and anger are repressed and denied, the internal pressure on our soul increases, we become depressed beyond measure or self-understanding, and its release, when it comes, and surely it will, will be destructive to self and as we learn from yesterday, to others, the Innocent.
We have much to learn from the Amish _expression of faith. The total acceptance of the presence and sovereignty, the providence and grace of God allow for the _expression of grief in gentleness and strength. This does not exclude anger, but as we have seen in the recent hit and run death of an Amish child riding his scooter, this acceptance includes forgiveness and the denial of hate as the will of God and thus an option for living.
And then we hear the voice of a plain grandfather, back turned to the camera answering the reporter’s question, “How can you forgive?” His answer, not lacking in pain, yet profound, “I forgive him in my heart.”
A most remarkable understanding of Psalm 130 is that the psalmist recognizes that it is his own sin, his own iniquities that have brought him to the depths of his despair, and cause him to cry from these depths, “O Lord . . . hear my cry!” In recognizing the nearness of God and the forgiveness of God the psalmist discovers hope!
“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope . . .
O Israel, hope in the Lord!
for with the lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
It is he who will redeem Israel
from all its iniquities.” Ps. 130:5, 7&8.
Finally, pray for the families and the Innocents, and as you do learn of and seek the righteousness evident in the midst of this weeks heart rending sin. Hold fast to your children and teach them of the wonder providence and grace of God. Demonstrate forgiveness, even, and especially when it seems impossible. As your children witness to your own trust in the Lord they too will trust in the one who is able to overcome every power to hurt or divide. We need not fear the profound chaotic depths, for God is with us. Amen.
