I've been thinking about the First Baptist Church of Maryville, Illinois, the church in which the senior pastor, Dr. Fred Winters, was gunned down during the Sunday morning service. Our prayers go out for the church and the pastor's wife and children.
When heartache and tragedy come, and there is no human link, we quickly and almost easily turn to God. If cancer comes or a terrible accident, we look to the Lord in our pain. If God allows this pain, we work through it with Him. We hopefully come to the place of faith and trust and knowing that nothing can separate us from His love.
But when tragedy comes through a human hand, we may be greatly tempted to simply look at the human hand. We have a place to spill our pain and grief. And, here we can get stuck. If we never move past the human agent, if we won't move past the human agent, we cement our pain. This is one of the consequences of unforgiveness.
We aren't called to move on but are called to move out. And reports are saying that the First Baptist Church is moving out of their place of pain and are reaching out to the human agent's family. The greatest testimony of the life of Dr. Winters would not be how firmly the church stays in its pain and anger, but how widely it reaches out in love.
For even a gunman cannot separate us from the love of Christ.
