Week Four of Advent
Unsolved Mystery
I thought the murder case would be solved by now. My mind has been heavily invested in the Idaho University student massacre. Not a very uplifting topic for Advent, right? This blog is supposed to be inspirational. I want justice for the family and friends, for the town of Moscow. I want Jesus’ healing touch for the families. I need to stop focusing on it so much. I just need to let go and let God. He is ultimately in control.
I was sick with a nasty cough this past week that, it seems, has been going around the country. I didn’t feel like doing anything but sleep and scroll through social media on my phone. This was punctuated with bouts of coughing fits day and night.
Social Media Magnification
Many of the social media posts of the slain Idaho college students continue to show many photos of their active and vibrant social life. As sorority and fraternity members, they had many friends. Now when I look at various photos of groups of young people, it’s hard not to think about the students whose lives were taken too soon. If this could happen in small town America, I suppose it can happen anywhere. Social media has brought us closer together than ever before, magnifying our lives and the lives of others.
Information on the potential suspects has been limited. I have listened to most of the theories but with so few updates they keep getting regurgitated and embellished. I know they could be plausible but, in my gut, I have to stick to the general idea of who I think it is. Time will tell but the longer it goes unsolved, the harder it will be to bring in any suspects.
What gets me is, why the perpetrator isn’t turning himself/herself in voluntarily. How can they live with this heavy guilt unless they are a psychopath that doesn’t feel remorse. If it were done by friends or acquaintances, we might ask ourselves, what kind of world are we living in? Life, at all stages, expendable? Killing as a form of expression or used as a solution to disagreement or controversy?
We have to ask ourselves the important questions. We have to ask ourselves where we are headed as a country and as a nation. What are we teaching our kids? Thank you for letting me vent.
Turning to Him in Our Brokenness
On a brighter note, we are in our fourth week of Advent, preparing our hearts for the coming of the Lord. How will we greet Him? My guess it will be with a clean heart but also with all of our brokenness. Jesus loves us and he loves who we are, who he created us to be at the moment of conception. We, in turn, seek out and discern who we are in Him when we decide on different paths in our lives.
Life without faith is vacuous. We fill it with everything imaginable under the sun, except what is truly important.
The more you feed something, the more it consumes you. Let us feed the love we have of Jesus, to our families, our church communities and to the world at large.
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” Matthew 1:23
This is what we believe, that God is with us through it all. He is the Alhpa and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Let us prepare to meet the Christ child at Christmas. Let His innocence capture our hearts with a new wonder for His love for us.
Isaiah 40:3-5
A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; The rugged land shall be made a plain the rough country, a broad valley. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all mankind shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.