Beloved:

     Hearts are full all over town for two young men; so very young.  Adam and James, they might have been in first grade together not that long ago.  One admittedly shot and killed the other, for no particular reason according to police. 
     Hearts full of sorrow for the one now gone.  He had a fiancee’, three babies, a mom, dad, sister, brother, two jobs and a life plan.  He loved and was well loved.

     Hearts full of what for the other; anger . . . disgust . . . . pity?  He lives on but seems to me more lost than the one who worked so hard and loved so well. Who loves him and where are they now?  Is his own mother’s heart is breaking?   How does a human living right here among us become such a stranger to kindness, goodness, affection?  By what string of events does a person so young become so beaten, so hopeless and so careless toward life around him, including his own?

     The gospel floods through stories like this, to remind me of everything I profess to believe and to rest my life.  God’s heart breaks for him, even if his own parents’ don’t.  Left to smolder, sin destroys everything in its path; the sinner and anyone who crosses the path.   God loves us more than God hates sin and for the most broken and lost among us, Jesus came.  In God’s eyes and heart, this broken, broken boy is as worthy of redemption as all the rest.  I pray someone, somewhere loves him.  But I take courage in knowing for sure that he is loved and might someday come to know it.

~peace & prayers, pastor annette

* http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2011/11/07/news.qp-4949057.sto  
* http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2011/11/08/news.qp-7530058.sto

 


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