Late Thoughts on Uvalde

The world is broken.  It broke in Genesis 3.  Most of the time, the world limps on, not noticing the injury until something comes along and smashes the broken bits to shards.  Like Uvalde.  We use words like “shattered” and “devastated” to talk about the lives that are affected.  Then we move on, leaving the grieving and wounded to themselves as just another fracture in the broken world we live in.

I thought about this a couple of days after my middle daughter’s graduation from high school.  Eight years from now, those who survived the Uvalde massacre will walk across a stage and pick up a diploma.  Nineteen families will not participate.  The thought made me sick.  What made me sicker was the large swath of our society that is willing to allow for such casualties to fight against a non-existent threat to a perceived right.  But what can I do?

I can remember this – God is especially interested in justice for those who are the weakest of society.  Widows, orphans, and children are held tightly in His heart, and He expects His own to hold them in their hearts too – and protect them.  There is no room or excuse for negligence in this area.  A society that fails this responsibility is under God’s judgement.  While it’s true we Christians live in the world but are not of the world, we have an obligation to the world – to hold out the truth and to be a prophetic voice if necessary; to call people to Jesus’ exclusive Lordship; to stand for the weak in the face of the strong.

Speaking this way, or marching, or signing petitions and writing to congress to call for God’s justice to be done is part of what a college professor I had centuries ago called “messy forays” into the world.  I can’t just shut up and say, “The world is thus, I’m not of it” and walk away.  I can’t neatly compartmentalize Caesar’s part of the world and God’s.  In no sense is faith ever to be a private affair where my church life is separate from the rest of my life.  We stain the world with marks of eternity when we get involved.

This website is called “Daily Faith Walk.”  I’ve explained before why, but it merits stating again.  Our faith is to be active.  It is not simply nor primarily a mental exercise.  It requires action.  It is a walk.  As children of God, let’s get to it.