Maranatha!

I am saddened and horrified by the events this morning at FBC Sutherland Springs, TX.
 
As I was scrolling through Twitter, I saw this thought from Ray Ortlund: “The San Antonio shooting prompts two sobering thoughts. One, it could have been any of us. Two, it *was* us. In Christ, we are one.”
 
This morning at Second Baptist we recognized the Saints that have gone before us and celebrated the Lord’s Supper. In both these acts, we are remembering and enacting that we are many parts but ONE body in Christ. We also remember in the Lord’s Supper that we have a savior who loves us, who not only died for us but conquered death for us as well, a savior who is risen and sits at the right hand of the Father.
 
When I wrote on the CBF blog back in June, in the aftermath of the congressional shooting in Northern Virginia, I wrote about rising above the rhetoric that so often comes to the fore at times like these. The events since, not least the massacre in Las Vegas and the one today in Texas, have only served to solidify my resolve that it is past time for the Church to take an active role, not in any specific policy (although I hope that voices of faith are heard in that debate), but in the much larger and harder task of serving as a reminder to the World that the ways of Death and Destruction that are all around us, that seem to be gripping us in an ever tighter vise grip-like hold, are not the way that it has to be. The Church is unique in the fact that we have a counter-narrative, one of a Savior not who killed, but who died, willingly, to show us and institute a better way, a more complete way, a Holier Way.
 
So, this November Sunday evening, let us weep with those that weep. Let us mourn with those that mourn. But all the while, let us remember that we, the Church, actually have the answer: the Love, Grace, and Gospel of Jesus Christ.
 
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

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