Bartlett, Tennessee is a suburb of Memphis where we spent one of our stateside assignments as missionaries. The news out of Bartlett from the weekend was about the disappearance of a former model from her home. Yesterday police went to interview a possible suspect. Before they could get to his room, he had killed himself with a long rifle – leaving a note about where her body could be found.
Just a few miles from the Baptist College of Florida are the towns of Samson and Geneva, Alabama. Yesterday a man burned his mother’s home igniting a rampage of killing that ended with 9 people being murdered before he was killed himself.
Sunday, Fred Winters stood in the pulpit at First Baptist, Maryville, Illinois and preached a message of hope. Before he could finish, a man known to be mentally ill entered the church with weaponry capable of killing 30, and ended Fred Winters life.
Psalm 39:5 declares: You, indeed, have made my days short in length, and my life span as nothing in Your sight. Yes, every mortal man is only a vapor. That wisp, that vapor can end at any moment…without explanation by human terms. Accusation will be leveled at God in these moments: how can a loving God allow something like this to happen? The response is that we live in a fallen world where man’s actions are reflective of his nature. God declares that humankind is fundamentally flawed; morally skewed; spiritually compromised. He offers Himself as the solution via His intervention in this world. But His intervention is extremely offensive to the human consciousness and people do not easily accept His revelation of their nature or His solution.
So, Christians, we press on: to proclaim Truth in the midst of self-deception. It is the Truth that Fred Winters died proclaiming: Jesus came, lived and died in self-sacrificial Love to clear the way for fallen man to come to Holy God. We must not forget that people die without that Message…and that they can die at without Him at any moment.
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