DEVOTIONAL FROM PASTOR DAVE MARCH 29, 2023

Our hearts are heavy this week with the news from Nashville of the attack that claimed the lives of 3 children and 3 adults at the Covenant Presbyterian School. I can’t conceive the grief and the trauma that these children’s parents, siblings, classmates, teachers, and friends must be experiencing; nor that of the spouses, children, colleagues, and friends of the adults; nor that of the parents of the attacker who may be more confounded by this than anyone. I’m praying that the Holy Spirit might find a way to bring the broken heart of God near to all of them in their brokenness and pain.

I’m also praying for all of us as a people, as a nation and society, that we will somehow find a way to move beyond the baseline response of “thoughts and prayers” and to build the kind of community that the ancient prophets envisioned. Prophets like Zechariah, who dreamed of a day where old men and old women will sit along the streets of the city with staffs in hand in their old age and where “the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets” (Zech 8:4-5).

Prophets like Isaiah and Micah, who envisioned a time when we will beat our “swords into plowshares” and our “spears into pruning hooks,” where we will transform our weapons that hurt ourselves and others into tools that help ourselves and others (Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3). And this isn’t just some ancient pipedream. Did you hear the story on NPR last month about an artist named Stephanie Mercedes, who takes old guns and bullet casings and melts them down and casts them into bells and other musical instruments?

I know there are no easy answers. I know there are no quick fixes. I know there are no simple solutions to the gun violence that pervades our society. But I find myself captivated by an image that the prophet Micah goes on to imagine, where “they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid” (Micah 4:4). And I can’t help but wonder what that would look like in our world today.

They shall all sit at their desks and on the school bus, and no one shall make them afraid.

They shall all stand at the chalkboard or the whiteboard, or lean on their brooms and their mops, and no one shall make them afraid.

They shall all go about their daily lives, their work and their rest and their play, and no one shall make them afraid.

No one shall make anyone afraid, because no one is afraid.

No one is afraid, because everyone is beloved. Every single one of us. Beloved by God whose perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).

Lord, help us all to live with less fear and with more love.