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Vol. 2008 Issue 06b ~ June

My husband sent me an email from work this morning linking me to a news article that reported on Steven Curtis Chapman’s adopted five-year-old daughter being killed yesterday, run over accidentally by her older brother in their driveway. Now, I don’t know Steven and Mary Beth Chapman, but my husband and I considered adopting last year and watched the informational video they put together. That, along with years of hearing his music on the radio, makes me feel like I know him, I guess. Because this loss of theirs has me swinging back and forth from crying to sighing to looking off into space to trying to do normal things around the house.

It kind of feels like the Church just got a collective kick in the gut. Seeing it online and then hearing it on two radio stations this morning, it kind of feels like the Christian version of 9/11 to me. Because if this doesn’t have evil written all over it, I don’t know what does. And I don’t mean for one second that her big brother set out to do this. That’s actually my point. Could it get more twisted than an innocent, loving older brother having to carry the burden of this for the rest of his life? It’s as if the enemy has been watching this sweet family attempt to bring light into this dark world through music and illuminating the cause of adoption and he didn’t like it one bit and thought he’d send one loud-and-clear message. Well, we got it. You’re real. And you’ve come to steal and kill and destroy. We get it.

I was flipping channels this morning and I landed on a dark-skinned man talking in a bit of an accent and I had the vague idea, just by that quick first impression, that he was an African man in Africa, describing a war that he had witnessed. He was pointing to the classroom where some women and children hid, and he said, “The reason you will not find any bullet holes in the walls of this school is because the weapon of choice was a machete.” I hear something like that and turn off the television. My heart cannot take stories of pain that are as real and deep as that. Some days I sit with the pain of this world, but most of the time I just have to make myself act like it really doesn’t exist because how would any of us get anything done, get through even one day of living regular life, if we really, really let the state of our world sink in all at once. Don’t tell me we don’t have an enemy.

But back to the Chapman family, though. I can’t imagine their pain. I can’t imagine being targeted like that. Someone hating me so much that they would do something so horrible. But then I remember, oh yes…lest I forget…their enemy is my enemy and he’s more real than we give him credit for. I think one of the biggest tragedies of the Church today is not that we act like there’s a devil behind every bush, but that we act like our enemy either isn’t real or isn’t all that hateful or we aren’t making enough waves for him to come after us. But he is and he is and we are.

But I don’t want to leave you scared or, oh I don’t know, put off by all this talk of a real enemy. I mean, I’m not backpedaling here…he’s as real as the day as long, but I don’t want to just leave you with that thought. So I’ll leave you with this one. I just heard a message the other day where the pastor kept hammering into us that “the promises of God are exceedingly great and precious”. And that one of the very best promises goes like this: God will never leave you. So, really, and I mean this…really...we have no need to fear because whatever comes our way, God will never leave us. And that’s about all I can hope for for this family and for yours and mine.

Submitted on : 27-May-2008