A big thank you to everyone for participating in an amazing worship service last night. For those of you who missed it, we spent time simply focusing on and praying for our violent world. In light of what happened at Virginia Tech last week and what goes on all over the world (Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, etc.) we asked the question: WHERE IS GOD IN THIS VIOLENT WORLD?
A couple of you asked me where we found the song O MY GOD that Ryan sang. FYI: it's off of Jars of Clay's newest CD Monster.
Also, a big thank you to Kristen Lunceford for her reflection piece Numbness. She has given me permission to post it below.
Numbnesss
Sanctuary:
April 17, 2007
Kristen
Lunceford
33
dead. Is anyone really surprised?
Some
numbness resounds from a people grown accustomed to darkness.
We
say we grieve for the first 32 and then struggle to accept that number 33 was
created and loved by God, too. But soon
we’ll move on and wait for the next headline, running between the raindrops
they’ll say we should have seen coming.
So
how did we get here and to what extent are we to blame?
When
did violence become entertainment?
When
did the right to bear muskets turn into the need to tow semi-automatic weapons?
Why
does the media indulge the notoriety sought by the McVeighs, Mansons, Klebolds,
and Chos, of this world while thousands of coffins from war go missing from the
evening news?
What
is more dangerous: bullets fired on a
college campus or the art of distraction?
And
what of the other kinds of brutality and affliction we ingest?
Why
did the stranded wait for days on submerged rooftops in plain sight of us all?
And how come they still don’t have proper roofs over their heads?
How
is it that a handbag sells for $42,000
while a father watches his 18-lb six-year old starve to death?
Why does the cancer refuse to relent?
What
kind of desperation drives a woman to toss her infant in a clothes dryer?
These
aren’t political issues. These are human voids.
We
pretend they don’t affect us so we aren’t obliged to act
We
distance ourselves; ignorance is bliss.
Why
are we so afraid to feel?
We
follow celebrities to escape
Only
to find that it’s all the same song, just a different verse.
Vanity
begets emptiness, or maybe it’s the other way around.
Depravity
surfaces, it’s all a destructive illusion.
We
watch on as
The
Amish forgive
And
the mothers march
And
the resilient families cling to flags folded neatly into triangles.
And
what do we do?
Well,
we blame and we consume and we give up and pass by,
Thinking
somehow our insulation will render us unaccountable.
All
the while forgetting that we are to be the peacemakers.
You
see, the rhythm of the world is off and so we struggle to move.
We’ve
lost our taste for salt,
Our
vision for radiance,
Our
capacity for empathy,
Our
motivation to step outside ourselves,
Our
belief, maybe, that we are part of the solution,
That
salvation and mercy really do live in us.
We
perpetuate violence by our indifference to it.
We
move greed forward with our appetite for it.
We
facilitate oppression by choosing to ignore it.
We
diminish the light when we neglect to stand for it…to live in it…to change
because of it.
What
will it take to make us cry or pray or do our part?
Must
we become widows or orphans ourselves? Must we bury our own children?
How close must grief come to us before we cry out
for the ones it has already consumed?
Oh,
my God, you’ve saved us from these sins, now save us from ourselves.
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