Month: August 2018

In three days this past weekend, three people were shot to death in my hometown of Jacksonville and many others were injured by gunfire.  One was killed after a high school football game and two were killed while playing in a video game tournament.

This morning I joined hands with a group of people at my church to pray for the victims’ families, the city, its leaders and that churches would be the light of the gospel to a city that is hurting.  A local politician has called for churches to step up.  As my pastor said, “… the church must understand that to ‘step up’ means we must first kneel before God together, seeking His face, His will, while confessing our sins of complacency and self-promotion …  Pray.  Step up.  Kneel down.  Step outside and be the light in the darkness.” (David Tarkington – http://getreal.typepad.com/get_real_with_david_tarki/2018/08/if-pray-is-simply-a-trending-hashtag-we-are-doing-this-wrong.html)

How can we stop this kind of violence?  To solve a problem or stop bad behavior, it is best to get to the source and tackle it there.  Is the source the availability of guns?  Is the source the cultural ethic within a group that says killing someone is a reasonable action?  Is the source a breakdown in traditional family structure with two involved parents?  Is the source untreated or ignored mental illness?

The source of this kind of violence may include all of these things, but at heart the source is sin.  It is not popular to say that in our world.  Many people don’t believe in sin, let alone God.  Whether we like it or not, whether we think of ourselves as sinners or not, sin is a reality.  All of us are sinners and are separated from God and the relationship he wants with us.

We call these acts “senseless violence.”  While it seems senseless to most people, to the people pulling the trigger it made sense, if only in the moment.  Most of us cannot understand that.  Most of us value life too much to take it from a fellow human.  Yet murder was the answer the shooters arrived at, including the shooter taking his own life at the gaming tournament.

How is a believer to respond?  We must grieve.  We must pray for all involved.  We must pray that in the violence and the loss that God will be found, that people will feel the tug of the grace that He offers.  We must love.

A believer must not compromise on Scripture; therefore, a believer cannot compromise on sin, but we also do not have the luxury of compromising on love.  In Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”  Everything in the Bible hangs on loving God and loving others!  We must offer love and grace to everyone.

We often cite part of a verse found in 1 John 4: “God is love.” (verse 8).  But we sometimes miss the entire verse: “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”   This is a beautiful verse, but it is also a deep theological statement.  It describes an intimate relationship.  It reveals God’s motivation for His actions from Creation to Redemption.  It is personal.  It is only by knowing God that we learn to love, and it is only by loving that we know God better.

God’s love for us prompted him to act.  In verse 10 of 1 John 4 we find that love prompted God to send His Son as payment for our sin.  Romans 5:8 reminds us that “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  Further in 1 John we are told that because God is love, “so also are we in this world.” (4:17) That is a bold statement that simply means if the world is going to see the love of God as a reality, it will see it in the actions of His people.

Verse 18 reminds us that there is no fear in love, that in fact, there is no room for fear because perfect love eliminates fear.  We need not fear people who are different than us.  We need not fear people who disagree with us.  We need not fear ideologies or other belief systems.  To disagree with someone does not mean discriminating against them or destroying them, but neither does loving someone mean condoning or approving of sin.  However, we must love.

I’m still trying to figure out what that looks like in this situation.  I couldn’t have prevented the shootings or taken a bullet aimed at someone else.  I don’t know any of the victims’ families to reach out to personally.  I can’t offer a hug or even a casserole.  But I encounter people every day that I can love.  I can focus on them and their need for a relationship with their Savior, rather than focus on their politics or their behavior or the way they dress or their perceived social standing.  I can truly listen and truly respond.  “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19).  We have no choice.  We should want no choice.

My mother died eleven years ago today.  She suffered with Alzheimer’s the last sixteen years of her life.   It first showed up as short-term memory loss.  Then it became evident in her speech.  At one point, she simply began to repeat what was said to her.  Later, she stopped talking altogether.  One day she fell and never got up again; she stopped walking.  The last two years of her life were spent in a bed in a nursing home where her physical needs could properly be met.

We certainly grieved her loss when she died, but we grieved her loss for a long time before that.  Mom was no longer an active part of our lives even as she continued to live.  I know many people have been through this with loved ones, but it is a very strange and hard thing to have someone physically present who is not really present, not engaged in the daily activities going on around her.  We missed her long before she died.

We can cry “unfair!” when things like Alzheimer’s occur, but it is not really unfair.  Alzheimer’s is part of our world, a broken and fallen world where diseases were never meant to occur.  What seems especially unfair is that my mother was a loving and faithful woman.  She exercised a strong faith in her Savior and lived it every day.  She loved my brother and me fiercely.  She served God faithfully. Why remove such a woman from such a life, yet allow her physical shell to linger?

Yet her legacy lives on.  My mother was a crafter.  She was always sewing, knitting, crocheting, etc.  We have afghans and blankets and coasters and needlepoint pictures and countless other things she made over the years.  She left us with boxes of fabric and supplies, including a small bag containing crocheted squares intended for another blanket.  Our daughter Megan is a crafter, too.  We have passed along to her several things of my mother’s including the crocheted squares.  Megan used those squares to create a small blanket.

The picture is of my mother’s great-granddaughter, Madeline, Megan’s daughter, who was born exactly three weeks ago.  The blanket laid over her is a joint effort between my mother and my daughter that took twenty-plus years to create.  I cannot look at this picture without tearing up.  It is a precious reminder of love that Megan has already promised will be passed along to her sisters when they have children.

But a blanket is not the only legacy my mother left.  We recently re-joined the church of our youth and I have heard countless stories about my mother and father and how loved they were.  She lives on in the memories of those who knew and appreciated her, and I am grateful for their memories and the stories they share.  She lives on in my brother’s heart (he is a special needs guy who is very special) who speaks of her frequently and tells me he will be with her again.  She lives on in my wife, Michele, who sat under my mother’s teaching as a teenager in Sunday School.  It was wonderful to watch them grow closer together through life. She lives on in my daughters who have various memories of her depending on their ages when the Alzheimer’s truly took effect.  I appreciate that they were raised living with our extended family including my grandmother, my Alzheimer’s mother and my special needs brother.  They have learned that love comes in many different shapes and dimensions.

My mother lives on in me.  I never doubted her love nor her faith.  She instilled values in me that have formed who I am, and I can still hear her voice in my head and heart.  Michele says she sounded like Dinah Shore for those of you who remember her.  Sometimes it is that Dinah Shore voice I hear and sometimes it is the “JONATHAN ANDREW KENDRICK” voice, but even the discipline was administered from a wellspring of love.

My mother gave me a bookmark before Alzheimer’s set in; it is almost as if she knew it was coming.  On the front is a drawing of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin with a quotation from Christopher: “Promise me you’ll never forget me.  Ever.  Even when I’m a hundred.”  On the back, my mother wrote, “Jon, even if I grow old and forget everything, I will never forget you and always love you in my heart.”

I Iove you, Mom.  I look forward to our reunion.