The names were released yesterday and faces are now being revealed today as we work our way through this dark time. Details are also emerging, clarifying some of the confusion that arose at the beginning. Teachers are being lauded as heroes, children are being remembered for their sweet, enchanting smiles and spirit. As I look at the pictures and read their stories, my heart hurts anew.
I’ve been working through John Piper’s Advent Book, Good News Of Great Joy. Today’s devotional was truly timely. He titled it “Life and Death at Christmas.” He wrote about his own mother’s death shortly before Christmas 1974. He shared that they buried her the day after Christmas and said “What a precious Christmas it was!” He also shared this:
Many of you will feel your loss this Christmas more pointedly
than before. Don’t block it out. Let it come. Feel it. What
is love for, if not to intensify our affections—both in life and
death? But, O, do not be bitter. It is tragically self-destructive
to be bitter.
I wept afresh as I read today’s devotional, tears of grief mingled with tears of joy; heartbreak and heartache and a heart cry. Piper ended his devotional today with this:
Christmas. What is it but this: I came that they might have
life. Marion Newstrum, Ruth Piper, and you and I—that we
might have Life, now and forever.
Make your Now the richer and deeper this Christmas by
drinking at the fountain of Forever. It is so near.
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
—John 10:10
All Things Elda 