The past few weeks have been strange and full of sorrows and loss, and the time has come to speak out about what is going on in our country.
To our shame we seem to be slipping as a nation into a new level of lawlessness that has resulted in tragedy and suffering, and it has brought many of us to mourning both the victims and something that we have lost that we can hardly define.
In less than a month we have seen all too vividly through our media sources who delight in showing the details, the unspeakable killing of children in an elementary school, the murder of a women who came to this country to escape war in her own country as she sat on a commuter train in broad daylight, and the intentional assassination of a private citizen for having the courage to speak the truth to the young of our nation in a kind and without any animosity towards those who were frankly a lot less polite in return.
I find all of this disturbing, and I think that we need to consider carefully where this is leading us as a nation.
In our lifetime, a lot of things have happened that are shocking, or terrifying or just plain confusing. Having been born in this great country, I have personally come to expect some level of peace and protection from bloodshed. A level of lawfulness and a level of justice.
I am not claiming that our country is perfect in every respect, but for most of us, we live in relative safety. As a people, we generally follow the rules, and we sleep at night without having to have an armed guard to protect us. And we do that with a freedom and liberty that is unmatched anywhere else because we live in a country based on Godly principles, the rule of law, and bought with the blood of many who have died to protect our nation and our freedom.
On September 10th, our country suffered a great tragedy when Charlie Kirk, a Christian man who stood tall for God and country was brutally assassinated, leaving behind a wife and two children and an entire country in mourning.
Charlie was one of us.
He isn’t the only man who died for his country, but most of the men who have died for this country have done that wearing a uniform or serving in a role that knowingly placed them in jeopardy. Charlie wasn’t serving in a position like that. He wasn’t a military man, or a policeman or a firefighter. He was just a man who was in public view standing for the truth.
We might not have agreed with him on every point, religious or political, but one of the beautiful things about being a citizen here is that we have the freedom to speak freely about our beliefs. We are supposed to agree that it is okay to disagree without having to fear reprisals.
Charlie’s death is a terrible tragedy for our country because it goes against the principals on which this country was founded. As soon as we lose the right to speak freely, we will be overcome by tyranny, and we will lose the gift of liberty that God has bestowed upon us.
I have been trying to consider and understand why this has happened and why it feels so new.
After all, we have seen good men gunned down in the past. For most who have been alive since 1960, I don’t even have to ask if you remember where you were when President Kennedy was killed, or even his brother Bobby. Whether you liked him or not, we were all shocked when President Reagan was shot. And the closest thing in my memory to the killing of Charlie was the day that Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered and oh how close to a civil war did we come as a nation on that day.
These were all bad things, and we have all had to struggle with what they meant and how they worked in the continuation of the grand experiment we call America, and that is in addition to what they mean in the fulfillment of God’s plan because we are Christians.
But the killing of Charlie Kirk brings something new to the equation. It demonstrates that we are moving ever deeper into lawlessness. And the risk of something happening, some tragedy you might never expect is getting closer to each one of us because the potential for lawlessness is spreading like a virus over our land.
There are those that will use this tragedy as a springboard to advance their agendas and take from us the liberty that we were granted by God and the founding fathers of this nation.
Don’t let them.
The temptation is to seek security and safety, and you should, but not at the expense of liberty. As a nation, we have paid a dear price for liberty, and we need to hold on to it for as long as we can.
So, what should we or can we do?
First, learn what makes this country great by examining who we are and who we’re created to be by our founding fathers. Second, stand for the things that make this country what it is, like freedom of religion and freedom of speech. These are freedoms that a good portion of the world has never experienced, and they have come at a heavy price and also are a burden and a responsibility that we all share. Third, we need to recognize that whether a person is religious or not, our county was founded on and operates on the Godly principles found in the Judeo-Christian faith and it will fail if those principles are denied or dismissed.
This is a large part of what it means to be a citizen of this great country.
Finally, I have been amazed at what has happened as a result of the murder of Charlie Kirk in both good ways and bad ways.
The bad things that have happened include seeing and hearing people in this country and around the world applaud the murder of a man that was only trying to share the truth with others in a peaceful, non-combative manner. If you have done this, you should be ashamed because there are a lot of men and women who have died defending your right to be able to express your opinion. But you should consider this, they didn’t die so that you could act disrespectfully with someone just because you don’t like what they have to say. The hope always has been that disagreement would bring discussion and debate and that we would find a better way as a nation because we act intelligently and we consider each other as valuable. It will never be right to applaud the murder of any person whose only crime is sharing their opinion.
Charlie’s only crime was listening to what the young people he met were saying and offering them truth in return in a calm and confident manner. We Christians would call that sharing the truth in love.
Charlie Kirk did that better than most. My hope is that we can all learn from him.
The good things that have come out of this tragedy include an intensified sense of awareness that lawlessness is on the rise and that some people who were walking through life in ignorance are waking up and realizing that they need the love of God in their lives.
I also sense that some who are in the church might also be waking up from their apathy and realizing that this God that we love and trust may just want more of them than they thought. My hope and prayer is they take Him a lot more seriously in these latter days.
I also hope that more of us will take our role as citizens of this nation more seriously and thank God for the gift He has given us in the United States of America. We all need to take more seriously the need to pray for our country and our leaders.
We are not taking anything away from the rest of the world when we show gratitude to God for His blessings and strive to make our country great. We aren’t demanding to be the greatest, even if our opinion here in the US is just that. We want to be great in gratitude for what God has done for us and we should want everyone outside the US to be great too.
There is so much more that could and should be said but let me close with this.
A great tragedy occurred, and it has affected us all. But we need to remember that a young woman and her two children will never see Charlie Kirk walk into their home again. They must deal with letting Charlie go because he is now in the presence of Jesus.
And it hurts, a lot.
We need to pray that this never happens again. And we need to pray for Charlie’s wife and children because they need God’s love, comfort and protection because Charlie can’t be there for them anymore.
It is a tremendous loss, but soon Jesus will come for the rest of us who have chosen Him as Lord and Savior, and the loss will just be a memory.
Rest in peace, Charlie.
Maranatha
Come Lord Soon
0 Comments