A True Story for Us All in a Hurting World (When Gunfire Tears Through Churches, There Are True Stories that Light God’s People on Fire)

Life is fragile.

The way a thin-glass Christmas ball ornament — that kind where you can see your face and all the light reflected in its shiny curves — the way it shatters like a whisper when dropped.

There were families holding their Bibles and each other’s hands, on a still Sunday morning in Texas, who had their heads bowed in honest prayer and their hearts surrendered in tender worship, when a rain of bullets hit their unsuspecting backs.

When sacred life drops to the ground, the very earth howls and the hush of heaven shatters and angel wings beat in holy grief.

And not for one second did a one-light town on a sleepy road in Texas weep alone. The tears of God wash away the fears of earth. We never grieve alone.

Last night, our Baby Girl climbs up and curls close in my lap and I stroke back her hair and I know it: we touch and hold our whole world tighter when tragedy touches the world.

And Baby Girl, she’s brought it again, that book she keeps asking for and returning to, because when she opens it, she’s surprised by joy all over again, that tree of very her own popping up.

She smiles all over again when it rises and she pats my cheek, “Read me, Mama — read me.”

I nod — Yes, Child — your mama will never stop reading your eyes, reading your heart, reading back to you the story that whispers your truest name, Beloved, so you know a story greater than the headlines, the Greatest Story ever told, because the secret to best living is to stay in the best story.

Baby Girl opens the Advent flap that reads, Open The Wonders of the Greatest Gift, — and her little fingers pulls out the 100 page booklet and she turns to a page at the beginning and points, “This one! Read me this one!”

And I begin at the beginning, His love always coming for us since the beginning, what we have to know for the middle of our stories to make sense.

“They hid from the Lord God among the trees.” She’s hanging little ornaments on her very own tree. “Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

I kind choke it back. Swallow it down.

I don’t say it out loud: And now we’re gonna get brutally honest here, God, and ask You, God: “Where are You? Where are You when bullets explode in the bodies of every man, woman and child, in a little Baptist church worshipping God on a November Sunday morning?

I’m reading slow when I get to the lines in that little book of hers:

“But Adam and Eve didn’t know that God had an enemy who hated Him. He was as clever and mean as a snake. That enemy’s name is Satan and he lies about everything. But most of all, he lies about God. He tries to make us believe that God doesn’t love us with all of His heart.”

And Baby Girl looks up into my eyes and I cup her sweet face with a million words I don’t say but my eyes are begging hers: “Read me. Read me.”

Never, ever forget the true story of how a snake— longer than a man—slithered its way right through the front door of a jungle missionary’s home and straight to the kitchen.

And the woman of the house had flung herself outside screaming. And that’s when a machete-wielding neighbor had calmly walked into her kitchen and he’d sliced off the head of the reptilian thing.

But a snake’s neurology and blood flow make it such that it slithers wild even after it’s been sliced headless.

For hours the missionary stood outside.

And the body of the snake rampaged on, thrashing hard against windows and walls, destroying chairs and table and all things good and home.

A snake can wreak havoc until it accepts it has no head. A snake can wreak havoc — until it accepts that it’s really dead.

And God promised that snake right in the beginning of His Story: “He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel,” and that Great Story, it ends in Revelation with nothing less than Christmas:

“And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child, he might devour it.

She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne…” (Rev. 12:1-6)

Never forget it: That serpent is crushed on the ground and Jesus is on the throne.

Never doubt it, wondering world: Even if the tail of evil still rampages on, that snake’s head is ruined now and forever.

Evil may have slithered into that little white clapboard First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas — but it is a headless evil because He who is the head of all things is on the throne.

Even the darkness is not dark to Him — and Advent is coming and it dares to defiantly proclaim that there is a definite way out of evil’s trap – because Christ shockingly stepped right into Satan’s trap – and snapped off his sickening head.

A woman in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a friend of several killed in yesterday’s church shooting, she turns last night to the rolling cameras and the watching world and she weeps: “…. the devil never rests.”

And the universe reverberates with it and reaches out to comfort her: Jesus shattered the skull of that serpent, and “the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” 1 John 3:8

He came — the only One Who could rescue, the only One Who could really save, the only One who can make the darkness and sadness come untrue and resurrect the lightest light. Infinite hope births into this world’s hopeless iniquity.

The answer to our suffering is so incomprehensible that it has to be incarnated to us in flesh.

He came — because in all our pain, we don’t want some answers like we want a Someone.

The Truest Answer always comes in Story. The story that says Someone came and He is Emmanuel, God with us, and when God is for us and with us, nothing can destroy us.

This is the story our children need to know for all the unknowns: God came to us with skin on, so that He could hold on to us, and we could hold on to hope.

Baby Girl turns the pages of book, her eyes reading the wonders of His love, the most wondrous story. And I nod and we will not let the dark win because Jesus already has conquered and we will press on.

To solely spend our attention on evil, pays homage only to Satan.

Baby Girl start to sing it, a hardly whisper, as she soundlessly turns the pages: “Jesus loves Me… little ones to Him belong, they are weak, but He is strong…”

And I pull her in close, and kiss her the top of her head: Yes, yes, He does, Baby Girl, — Jesus loves us and we love Him and we know it in our bones:

What pierces our hearts, nailed God to a Cross. And God looks you straight in the eye and stretches out His arms and lets Himself be pierced right through too, because He will go to any lengths to make sure you know you never suffer alone.

This is what we always keep doing: We cleave to each other and we grieve with each other because this is what splits suffering in half. You can count on it: Aloneness widens suffering but togetherness weakens suffering.

And we all pull in close.

We hold on to each other so the darkness doesn’t have a hold on us.

We lend each other courage when we refuse to be discouraged.

We lament but we never  relent in the rising again.

The sun rises today.

Life may be fragile but evil’s head is fractured and Jesus has finished him off and filled us with faith that flattens all the forces of evil.

In the face – no, the tail – of evil, there is a faith that never ends, and a story that resurrects again the wonders of His forever love.

 

Quietly: Today’s the last day to pick up the The Wonder of the Greatest Gift & receive Ann’s free audio recording of the entire 25 days of devotional Advent readings of The Wonder of the Greatest Gift for the whole family.

Just  enter your purchase information here. — so if you can’t read to the kids some busy Advent nights — Ann will count it a privilege to freely do all the reading!  Because, this full love story of Jesus’ coming, right from the very beginning? Maybe that’s the love story we all need to keep returning to these days…