This post is for my grandsons, Maseo & Uriah, because they’re safe at home in the arms of their mom and dad. And this post is for the moms and dads who will never be able to hold their babies safe at home again.
Thus says the LORD: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.” – Jeremiah 31:15
My heart, along with so many around the world, is broken tonight. I cry. The tears stop and I go on, puttering around the house at the end of the work week, and then I stop and cry again because I think of those babies, the same age as my grandson, and the horror they faced and the fear they must have felt and no one there to save them and I cry again because I’m a parent and a parent is supposed to be there to protect the babies. And no one could protect those babies. And I cry some more.
I don’t really want to think much of tomorrow, because tomorrow will pretty much be the same thing for me. I’ll get up and go on with my life. I’ll go for a run in the morning and then go shopping, business as usual for the most part. The moms and dads of those beautiful babies won’t have that luxury. Their world has changed and there’s no going back to the way things were. Ok, I may cry some more.
I’ve nothing much to offer these families except my prayers and grief-filled silence. I would sit and mourn quietly with them if I were closer. Because I can’t, I want to share this with those who will sit with them, who will hold them and cry with them. John Piper originally wrote this post to help his elders minister to their own people following the tragedies of Columbine and September 11, 2001. He has written this subsequent post to offer words of hope during this hopeless time, words of grace to console.
During this Advent Season, this time of anticipation, we now find ourselves waiting, but in a different way. We’re now waiting for someone to save us from this nightmare, this sea of grief in which we’re drowning. Christmas is no longer about tinsel and ornaments and sleigh bells. It’s now about a long road that we are traveling along, only to find not an inn of comfort but a trough in a stench-filled stall. Christmas has become grief-filled and hard and dark and cold.
And into this cold and dark and stench, God came. And God is here.
And that is how he came. He knew what this world needed. Not a comedian. Not a sports hero. Not a movie star. Not a political genius. Not a doctor. Not even a pastor. The world needed what no mere man could be.
The world needed a suffering Sovereign. Mere suffering would not do. Mere sovereignty would not do. The one is not strong enough to save; the other is not weak enough to sympathize.
So he came as who he was: the compassionate King. The crushed Conqueror. The lamb-like Lion. The suffering Sovereign.
Peace, dear hearts. Peace be with you.
All Things Elda 