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LITTLETON TRAGEDY
#4
We've been spending this week sharing, in an informal
way, just our thoughts and the cry of our heart regarding what happened
two weeks ago at Columbine High School in Colorado. Which, of course,
meant that we had to preempt our regular radio schedule for what we call
Week #18, running May 3-7. The painful irony is this: we had scheduled
in this week's slot of programs an encore presentation that turned our
hearts and minds toward the announcement that this week was supposed to
be and IS a countdown to the National Day of Prayer. Which happens
to be today, May 6. All around North America, and really, on a worldwide
basis, people everywhere are turning to God in prayer in a unique way.
So of course, what happened at that high school has given all of us the
opportunity to think more about prayer. What really IS it? Along with
the agonizing question of these past two weeks "Where in the world
is God?" we have to add this one for Thursday. "Does prayer
work at all? Is anybody out there in the Great Beyond watching and paying
attention when two young men put on their black trench coats, go into
a high school, and mow down their fellow students and a teacher?
I'm sure Denver police captain Vince DiManna was somewhat unprepared for
this tragic event. Even after 26 years on the Denver police force, and
as a veteran of the SWAT team, there was no way to know exactly how to
handle a crisis like this one. What made it all the worse was that his
own kid, Jeff, was there inside that building where the two snipers were
loose. It was 90 minutes of raw dread before he knew his youngest son
was okay.
The school principal, Frank DeAngelis, wasn't able to be completely prepared
for this. The school had its emergency procedures, sure; there was a uniformed
guard who got off an unsuccessful shot, attempting to defend his nearly
2,000 youthful charges. But this principal wasn't really even aware of
the elements of this case: the Trench Coat Mafia, the "Gothic"
subculture. Even parents didn't seem to know about the year-long plans
to kill. They were all blissfully unaware.
But there was One who knew all along . . . and that was God. And He's
SUPPOSED to know! So, here on the National Day of Prayer, the question
burns within us. Where was God at 11:20 a.m.? Why weren't prayers of Christians
answered on this dreaded day, "420," the 110th anniversary of
the birth of another mass killer, Adolf Hitler? When Christian students
like John Tomlin prayed with their parents for protection for the day,
for angels to be with them and guard their footsteps . . . what happened?
Does the angel promise of Psalm 34:7 mean anything or doesn't it? When
cell phones and beepers worked so immediately, so efficiently, on that
dark Tuesday, as kids huddled in science labs and a deep-freeze in the
kitchen dialed out to tell parents they were safe, why didn't prayers
get through? That old song, "Operator, get me Jesus on the line,"
seems rather hollow now as families of Christian kids attend the funerals
and wonder why phone lines work and prayer lines don't.
Well, the story of Job certainly comes to mind. God faces His own accuser,
named Lucifer, who sneers in his Maker's face: "These people only
follow You and kiss up' to You because You protect them! Look at Job!
You've made him a millionaire; his kids all go to the best schools in
town and drive BMWs to their football games. No wonder they're all Christians!
Every time they pray, You say yes to them. God, You're nothing more than
a Santa Claus to Job and his tribe." And for the next 42 chapters
God allows Satan and a watching universe to ascertain whether there
are people who will keep in a relationship with God even when He says
no to their prayers . . . or even appears to not answer them at all.
Some of us heard a wonderful sermon just the other day from Pastor Morris
Venden, who hosts our Sunday broadcast, heard on many of these same stations.
And he took us, in our imaginations, to that Judgment Day moment, where
the "Sheep and the Goats" all face their moment of destiny.
And someone outside the kingdom stands up in protest. "God, You let
me get cancer! Nobody ever offered me a break! I wanted to get well, but
no . . . I didn't get any help. This is unfair!"
But very quietly, without fanfare, a person inside the New Jerusalem steps
forward and tells a similar story. They had cancer too. The battle was
fierce for them as well. And despite their prayers, God allowed them to
face this unseen foe right to the end. They, too, died after a long battle.
And the rebel's charge that God is unfair dies away.
Others might protest from the alien camp that their kids were killed in
tragic car crashes. Or in a schoolyard shooting. Where was God? Why didn't
He rescue them? Was heaven picking on them just because they weren't born-again
Christians who went to church 52 times a year? And the accusation stands
thick in the air.
But again, one of God's loyal followers stands up. Maybe it's the Tomlin
family. They went with their son John to Mexico for a mission trip just
last year; they worked side by side with him to build a house for poor
people there. Certainly on Tuesday morning, April 20, just 16 days ago,
that God-fearing family knelt at the kitchen table and committed their
lives to Jesus. They placed their destinies in God's hands, as I'm sure
they do every single day of the year. Just a few hours later, this handsome
16-year-old Christian was dead. Rachel Scott was dead. Born-again Christian
Cassie Bernall, who had been rescued from an occult lifestyle just two
years earlier, was dead. And the parents of these precious kids stand
up to tell their stories. Their loved ones died too.
Does that mean God never answered their prayers? Did He ignore them? Did
He turn a deaf ear to their petitions on Tuesday, April 20? Those parents
will stand up and testify with great courage that they continued to trust
in God. That they believed in God, even when they couldn't understand
His purposes. They'll testify that when hundreds crowded into the churches
for these Christian funerals maybe you saw them on TV that God was
there too. God mourned too. As students wrote farewell messages on Rachel's
white casket, I'm sure God's invisible hand shook with emotion as He wrote
His own agonizing words of love. You probably saw the note Rachel's mom
attached to the casket: "Honey, You are everything a mother could
ever ask the Lord for in a daughter. I love you so much! Mom." Did
God not read those words? Did He not care? Did He not answer? Friend,
God's cries are the most wrenching of all. The Bible tells us that in
the end God will wipe away all tears . . . beginning with His own. Believe
me, He will have to begin with His own.
The great Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis, wrote in a rather safe and
sterile cocoon about things like prayer and God's response to our hurts.
And then all at once it hurt for HIM! His own wife, his beloved Joy, was
snatched away in abrupt fashion, when cancer struck her down. All at once,
Jack Lewis had to wonder himself about prayer. Where was this wonderful
God NOW? What was the purpose in THIS "no"? Was he not the great
Christian writer who ought to get preferential treatment?
And he fought his way through, by faith, to the other side of his grief.
Which caused him to muse, much later, in a bit of continuing bewilderment,
how God sometimes has to allow His best soldiers to travel to the hardest
battlefield. And it seems there are very few phones there. These people
don't get many reinforcements. Other people get the blessings, and they
don't. Other people's kids are spared the assassin's bullets, but theirs
aren't. Why? he asks. And really, it all comes down to this question of
a larger war. The accuser of God's people always looks for favoritism;
he looks for any hint of a tilted playing field. Do the people of the
kingdom of God expect and demand and get a slot machine that pays off
with every quarter put in? Do we follow heaven just because we get an
extra Secret Service detail assigned to our kids there at Columbine High
School or in whatever battlefield they enter? Or do we trust God when
He says yes, when He says maybe, when He says wait, and even when He says
for good reasons that only He knows here on the National Day of Prayer
must for now be a "no"?
Well, this brings us back to today. The National Day of Prayer . . . and
us. How should WE pray? Jesus prayed, "Thy will be done," and
knew that His heavenly Father loved Him enough to always give the answer
which, in the eternal scheme of things, would be the right one and the
best one. Job, here in this great but tragic story, trusted God enough
to pray: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Of course,
it was Satan who was trying to kill Job, not God. But this man of abiding
faith knew that life and death were such temporary situations compared
with the everlasting victory of God over His own accusers.
So friend, let's pray. As Job and Jesus prayed, and as these brave champions
of faith in Littleton, Colorado, pray . . . let us all pray together.
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