What Did We Expect?

This morning on the news, the top story was another shooting in Chicago. Along with this shooting, they reported the number of shootings so far in the city, as well as the numbers for New York and Los Angeles (Chicago "wins" with the highest number, by the way). This shooting took place in someone's front yard, but no matter where it happens, every shooting is tragic and horrible. Because every life matters to God and should matter to us.

In the midst of the reporting this morning, a city policeman was interviewed. I didn't catch the name nor his rank, but here's the basic theme of what he said: we don't have a shooting problem, we have a society problem. The issue is much larger than one incident. It's a societal problem where people in poverty lose hope and react in violence. He's right, but it's even bigger than that. As Becky Pippert and, later, Rick Warren have both said: the problem with the world is me. At a basic level, the problem is not guns or crime or "have's and have not's." The problem is a loss of hope, a loss of purpose, a loss of seeing each other as valuable.

What did we expect? When we push God out of our lives, what did we expect? Every vacuum demands to be filled, so when we chose to ignore and "get rid of" God, something would have to rush in to fill that "God-shaped vacuum" that Pascal identified. We have chosen to try to fill it with our own egos, or more stuff, or politics and power. We have tried, it seems, to fill it with everything imaginable, except the only thing that will actually fill it. It's a God-shaped vacuum; nothing else will fit correctly.

We don't have a violence problem. We have a hopelessness problem, a hopelessness we created ourselves by running from the one who created us for himself. As St. Augustine put it, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

While it's easy to sit around, point fingers and complain, the bigger question is this: with whom will you share hope today? This is an opportunity and an obligation for those who have the hope found in Jesus Christ. Paul reminded us in Romans 10:14, "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?" (And while the NIV says "preaching," the word there means "proclaim or announce," which is something anyone can do, whether you're a "preacher" or not.) With whom will you share the hope found in Jesus?

In one of the Nazi concentration camps, there was a young boy who would later grow up to be a rabbi. As in all of those camps, this family was given very little food to survive—some grain, a bit of stale bread, and a few grams of lard each week. The boy’s father, though, remained determined to observe the Sabbath with prayers and blessings each week. He would not give up who they were; he would not give up that hope. Somehow, most weeks they managed to find a scrap of candle, which they would light for Sabbath prayers, but one week, there was no candle. So when evening came and it was time for Sabbath prayers, the boy’s father gathered their precious lard, molded it around a piece of string and lit the makeshift candle. Then he led his family in prayers and blessings. When the prayers were done, the son was furious. “How could you do that?” he asked his father. “How could you waste what little lard we have to make a candle? It’s the only food we have!” His father answered, “Son, without food we can live for several days. Without hope, we cannot live an hour.”

With whom will you share hope today?