This past Tuesday I was invited to join a group of pastors and ministry leaders from Parker, Colorado. Teen suicide has hit the shores of this Denver suburb with tsunami-like impact. A day before the breakfast I was asked if I would be willing to share a few thoughts with these men and women.
As I prepared to speak for this gathering, I was drawn singularly to God’s Word. It was as if the Holy Spirit whispered in my ear, “Just read from God’s Word.” And so I did. From Lamentations, from Jeremiah and from the book of John.
Here is what I read to the hungry hearts in the room…
How lonely sits the city…
She weeps bitterly in the night;
With tears on her cheeks.
For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for a comforter is far from me, one to revive my spirit; my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed.
My eyes are spent with weeping;
My stomach churns.
What can I say for you, to what compare you?
What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you?
For your ruin is vast as the sea; who can heal you?
…my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the LORD.”
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
And then three simple phrases came to me…
There is no balm like God’s Word.
There is no hope but Jesus.
There is no megaphone like unity.
God have mercy.
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