Common Sense Reborn

A Season of Lament

⁴“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)

Greetings family. This morning, after serving in the nine o’clock service, I was standing in the middle of Compassion Christian‘s busy common area. The building was bustling with people. I had just picked up our 8-year-old from upstairs, families were beginning to come in for the eleven o’clock service, the early service families were on their way out. To my left was the Cafe, to my right was the volunteer lounge. Families were greeting one another. One of the Worship team’s drummers gave a friend a heartfelt handshake and pulled him in for a hug. Many were talking, some were laughing. Through it all, I stopped and felt my heartbreaking. While this should be the scene in any Christian church, with the state of our current country and the world, I could not help but think: Is anyone even paying attention? Does anyone care?

From one disaster to another, as a Christian, we should be lamenting over the state of the world. While a fragile ceasefire is currently in place between Israel and Hamas, the pictures and videos coming out of Gaza are horrific. The Gaza strip is utterly destroyed. Palestinians are returning to their homes to find mountains of rubble. It will take years for them to rebuild, and the cost will be in the billions of dollars. Over 67,000 Palestinians have been murdered, many of them women and children, and the world just let it happen. The world watched genocide unfold in real time and did nothing.

Russia is beating the war drums louder and louder as America’s current administration is finally considering equipping Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles. That war has claimed an unknown number of lives, but many experts gauge that over 250,000 russian soldiers have perished in this foolish war, and Ukraine has lost over 60,000 heroes. Europe and Nato have just stood by watching this conflict play out, sending weapons here and there, but allowing the much smaller Ukraine fight for its sovereignty for the last three and a half years.

Sudan is suffering the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis as the civil war in that country has displaced over 14 million people and most of the world is not even paying attention to this global catastrophe. The countries around Sudan are doing nothing to address this issue.

The list goes on and on. Here are the top crises the world can no longer ignore according to the International Rescue Committee. And while we here in America may feel like all of these problems are a world away, the very least we can do is mourn for the state of the world, to lament with the heartbreak of our Heavenly Father for all these man-made disasters that are destroying His children around this precious planet.

And then there is this mess we call America. I could go into my usual lamentation over the state of this country, but my favorite Reverend (Rev. Benjamin Cremer) has a much better way with words than I ever will. His latest post on his substack, “Into The Gray“, is a powerful reminder of the damage America is doing to the image of “Christianity” each and every day.

So, if you have been wondering why I have not been putting posts together very much lately, it is because I am in a season of mourning. Mourning for America and the way this country takes the name of Christ in vain. The way we ignore the teachings of Jesus or even the words of America’s first Catholic pope. We pour more support into division instead of helping those that Jesus commanded us to help. We continue to point our fingers at one another instead of working together to fix the issues plaguing this country. And we lift up a president who has fanned this fire for the last nine months. The one thing the devil loves more than our devotion to him is our distraction from the real issues of our times. So, yeah, I have not really had the energy to sit down and write something on this platform. I have made my position clear these last five years. Almost six years ago, I wrote about what I called “The Great Distraction“, and the distractions just keep getting worse and worse every day.

If you want to find me, you can meet me in the valley, mourning for this world and desperately calling for Jesus to come back. Come, Jesus, come.