The
prophet Habakkuk could have been speaking about the largest church shooting in
American history
and the worst mass shooting in Texas history that occurred on November 5,
2017. He wrote:
Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no
grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food, though there are no
sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet
I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in
God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my
strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights (Habakkuk 3:17-19).
The particular
Sunday marking the bloodiest day in American church history was designated the
day to pray for the persecuted church worldwide. American’s don’t regularly face a hitman
charging through their churches on a Sunday morning. Normally we get to worship God without fear
of government regulations or terrorism. It’s
unusual that we are the ones who were murdered in cold blood because we worship
God. We will need the same enduring
faith that Habakkuk came to in order to keep our faith in the goodness of God
while we are murdered in church. It's
the kind of faith that keeps the persecuted church moving forward. True Christians will go down trusting! They believe that God is who He says He is
and that acts of violence prove how desperate we are for Christ’s powerful
salvation!
How do we
come to that kind of faith? It’s
impossible without expressing our human disappointment in God. God is the One who has the power to stop
shooters in their tracks. He can thwart
Satan’s plans. Horrific things happen to
good people. It’s definitely not karma
that rules the world. In fact, it seems
the worst people get away with the most.
Tragedies like these are the tests of our faith. We all wonder why God does what He does. Faith believes there is a reason, even if we
can never understand why on earth.
Corrie
Ten Boon, whose entire family died in German Concentration Camps including her
sister who died by her side, came to look at her immense suffering as the
backside of a tapestry. She saw her life
experiences as an unsightly knotted material of unrelated colors, but from
heaven she believed her suffering looks like a beautiful tapestry woven with
purpose and meaning. She survived to
tell the story of what happened to Christians who hid their Jewish neighbors in
Nazi Germany. The greatest spiritual
victory in her life was coming face to face with one of the German soldiers who
particularly mistreated she and her sister.
It was a golden thread of her personal tapestry. Forgiving that man was an act of God in
her. It may have felt and looked like a knotted
mess from her side of the tapestry, but she believed it was forming something beautiful
in God’s sight.
Enduring faith
will be the only way the Texas town wills survive their utter tragedy. They will need to grieve and walk through
their anger or disappointment in God. If
they have true faith, they will believe in the goodness of God the way Habakkuk
did. Even when it seems that God is not
supplying the most basic comforts of life, safety in a place of worship, they
will trust Him. They will go down
trusting like the members of the persecuted church, like the martyrs. God is bigger than every human tragedy we
face.
Copyright © 2017.
Deborah R Newman. teatimeforyoursoul.com
All Rights Reserved.
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