There's nothing I can add to the many comments, opinions, and prayers that have been everywhere since the terrorist attacks in Paris last Thursday. We live in a fallen world where evil is made even more malicious and perverse when it masquerades as religion. Sadly, my many friends whose opinion of religion is skeptical at best find incidents like this to be just fuel added to the fire. We who believe get painted with the same brush, and often deservedly so.
It is tragedies like this that press me to abandon my focus on the small blessings of life. Issues so huge and monstrous as these beg for answers I don't have. I can pray, and I do, but if ISIS is to be believed, we are seeing only the beginning of the carnage to come. It's almost a fulfillment of Jesus' declaration that things will continue to deteriorate till apart from God's intervention, no one would survive.
So what can I do? I can pray. I can vote for national leaders who will have the courage and determination to name the enemy and go on the offensive. But I also need to remember the real Enemy behind it all so I may be able to love even those who are bent on destruction. Even these Christ died to save. Most important for me is to maintain my focus on the goodness of God. The reality of evil would press me to abandon such belief as illogical and foolish, but everyday life says otherwise. If God is not at work in the world, we all might as well lay down and give up. I for one refuse to allow the evil "out there" access to "in here," my heart and soul. I give thanks tonight for a warm home, food and clothing enough, for the tools and toys that make my life easier. Most of all, I am thankful for the Gospel that assures me that Jesus Christ is Victor, that he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will come again to judge the living and the dead. It is that hope that enables me to keep going, to refuse to give up or give in. Just as when Jesus hung lifeless on the Cross and the devil thought he had won, so today it seems as if all is lost. But Christ is at work behind the scenes in the realm of the spirit, accomplishing his plans which will one day be revealed as clearly as on that morning when he stepped victorious from the tomb.
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