Thoughts and Prayers

If you watch any news at all, you've probably seen it. If you watch certain news outlets, you've probably seen it quite a bit. If you have social media, you've definitely seen something at least acknowledging it. It is the mayor of Minneapolis in the aftermath of yet another shooting at a church, and he said, "Don't just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. ...These kids were literally praying." 

And the culture of the world that has been trying to tell you for so long that God is irrelevant, that He doesn't matter, that He isn't real, that He isn't good, that you're delusional for being a person of faith, that you're wasting your breath thinking you're sending it toward the heavens...that culture of the world erupted in applause and loud cheers. 

It's about time that someone has the guts to just absolutely come out and say it straight like that, especially in a moment when, he's right - these kids were literally praying when an individual broken by the culture of the world opened fire and started shooting them. 

How can you possibly still claim the value of prayer after that?

In a moment like this, when the conclusion seems so clear-cut on the surface, the world thinks it has us. We are absolutely, hopelessly, completely delusional if we still cling to faith in a God who can't even save His people while they are praying to Him. 

Can't...or possibly worse, won't. 

But here's the thing - for all the bravado, all the arrogance, all the false-confidence that these types of guys have, these guys who want to tell you that your God can't (or won't) save you and that only their brilliant ideas, which they tout as "common sense," will...they can't save you, either. 

Not without eliminating your free will. 

They can't save you from yourself without restricting who you are allowed to be. Their solution to save you from gun violence is to tell you that you aren't allowed to have a gun. They have already made it so that the whole world is locked down - so that you can't even walk into a church in the middle of a weekday any more because the doors are locked for "safety." So that you can't visit your own kid at school without passing a background check and even then, having a member of school staff go retrieve your kid and bring them to you. So that you can't walk into a concert venue that you paid to have access to without proving you don't have a weapon on you. So that you can't carry your regular purse into an event because it's not see-through. 

They have severely restricted your world and are doing their best to remove your free will and your freedom because they have claimed it is the only way to keep you safe, and they still can't keep you safe, and their response to this is that they haven't taken away enough of your freedom yet to keep you safe and that you should give them more of it. 

And they're upset with God?

They're upset with God for not eliminating the free will in the world and pulling every single string like some kind of puppetmaster, but their own schemes keep proving that you can pull as many strings as you want, and you still can't save us from ourselves. 

The world is broken. It's already broken. There's nothing you can do to put all of the toothpaste back in the tube at this point. The only thing you can do is decide how you want to live with it.