Yesterday, the country experienced another horrible act of domestic terrorism with the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. This 31 year old was gunned down during a campus rally in Utah and, unfortunately, video of the bullet impact to his throat, resulting in a fatal injury, is making the rounds on social media. Last night, I went out front and lowered our flag to half staff in accordance with the proclamation by President Trump. Unfortunately, lowering the flag is becoming a frequent occurrence.
Our nation has also experienced a shooting yesterday in Colorado with three victims and every night the news is filled with true stories of violence, shootings and all kinds of unlawful activities – to say nothing of the human death counts that are a result of this carnage. Last weekend alone, Chicago experienced 55 shooting – seven of which ended in death. We also saw video of a young woman murdered on a train while others in the car failed to get involved. And let’s not forget that 24 years ago today, our country experienced one of the worst acts of terrorism ever perpetrated on our soil. Thousands of Americans lost their lives – at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field where the 4th target was saved from destruction by a selfless, brave group aboard the aircraft. What is the world coming to? Our society is becoming paralyzed by the violence that has become a part of our everyday existence and it is destroying our country.
The truth of the matter is that people are scared and perpetrators want to do everything they can to snuff out the lives of people who don’t think like they do. This is not only a political thing, it touches on every difference people have from one another – religious, socio-economic and even financial. Our tolerance for one another is waning and tempers are growing shorter by the month.
Charlie was a person who bled red, white and blue. First and foremost, he was an American. It doesn’t make any difference whether he was Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, or any other category that people may use to justify murder. Enough is enough. And I can’t even begin to fathom the number of people who celebrated his murder on social media. Clearly, they can’t even profess to have a belief in God.
Aside from his citizenship, Charlie was married, with a family and like many of us, wanted the best for his family. He had a special connection with high school and college students – helping them to process what it means to be an American, and a free thinker. Whether we agree with him politically is irrelevant. The fact is that murder is wrong. But more than 2000 people on campus saw Charlie get assassinated yesterday afternoon. Someone sent me a text with the video of the assassination. It was shocking and very disconcerting.
Reporters interviewed members of Congress from both sides of the aisle and it was good to hear that there was bipartisan support for condemning this heinous crime. I wish that I could say the same thing for reporters themselves. There is still a partisan divide in our country and neither side wants to be the first to put down their verbal weapons – their assaults on their perceived enemies.
I truly don’t know where the country goes from here. Things just keep getting worse and worse. If we aren’t careful, this entire country will slip away before our eyes and we will live in anarchy. What we need is a revival in this country. When I was back in seminary, one of my classmates constantly spoke about the need for a return to God. That was twenty years ago. Now I understand what he was speaking about. But this is too big for us in our humanness to undertake. We are all flawed people.
This is clearly a job for God and the Holy Spirit. It is imperative that those of us who profess a belief in Jesus Christ pray that we can experience a movement unlike anything we have ever seen since the beginning of the church in Acts 2:42. In the meantime, we can pray that Charlie, a devout Christian, has already been welcomed into the kingdom of God and has received his crown from the LORD Himself. His work here on earth is completed and he will reside with Jesus in Paradise for all eternity. Someday, hopefully far into the future, his wife Erika and their children will join him there.
For the rest of us, we would do well to be reminded of the commandment of Jesus in the Gospel of John. For now, it must be our “North Star” – the thing that we cling to and practice for the benefit of all mankind. John gives us the words of Jesus in tonight’s verse on love. John tells us, in John 13:34-35, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
My encouragement this evening is that with God, all things are possible. We must wait on the Lord to fight this battle for us. We must remain humble, expecting miracles and pray that the carnage will stop. My prayer is that those of us who profess a belief in Christ will pray continually that God will answer our prayer for peace in the world. More specifically, that our reverence for human life, as we are created in the image of God, will prevail and that we have the most powerful tool in the world – prayer – at our disposal. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace… RIP, Charlie, until we meet in heaven…