This week is the hardest week to be a Nashvillian.  Our lovely, amazing, ever-changing city is mourning an unthinkable tragedy.  Nashville has had our fair share of tragedy.  We have survived and then thrived as a community through massive floods and devastating tornados.  In tragedy, Nashville thrives through the devastation because we exude the gift of hospitality.  We understand the value of another, and we love to help those in need.  We truly are the volunteer state.  However, the murder of three beloved children and three selfless adults within the walls of The Covenant School is unlike any tragedy we have seen.  We deal with tragedy by doing, by showing up, by helping.  But today, there is nothing to do.  We hang our red bows, and we attend funerals of the those we have learned were remarkable individuals.  We weep, we gather, we question, we doubt, and we even try to forget.  However, each morning we wake up and this nightmare still really happened. We drive our scared kids to school.  We drive down Hillsboro Road past The Covenant School and we can’t not cry.  We are broken, and we are more aware of our brokenness than ever before.  In fact, we had forgotten how broken this world can actually be.  We build and structure our lives to keep the brokenness out.  Yet today we awake with the realization that there is nothing that we can do to fully control our environment.  So, we mourn, we cry out, we need direction, comfort, and peace.  What are we to do?  Because remember we are in fact the Volunteer State, we do things, we engage.  But what is there to do but mourn?

What I am learning from the Covenant family is something unexplainable is happening.  In the mourning there is unimaginable hope.  To quote a Covenant friend “The only way I’ve known how to describe how we have felt is shattered. But something shifted at Hallie’s funeral yesterday... something divine happened. Together we pushed back darkness and sang and praised God more loudly and stronger than ever… Every word spoken… was powerful and precious, and every word we sang was a protest to the evil.”  We have never been more aware of evil than we are today.  The Covenant children and staff came face to face with evil.  And as we mourn and experience the stages of grief, anger and sadness about the power of evil is overwhelming. 

Nashville - as bad as we want things to go back to normal and try to forget this horrific tragedy ever happened, we can’t let that happen.  We can’t bury this or mask it. We can’t medicate this away.  No, evil went too far. He over played his hand. He came to steal, kill and destroy, but as is his custom, in his craftiness he does so without us even knowing.  He steals from us and we don’t know it. He leads us down life’s path and we are subtly directed away from truth, away from the life we are intended to have.  We are being deceived; we want to create a safe comfortable life for ourselves.  We don’t want to rock the boat or stand out because we have become addicted to the world’s approval and opinion of us.  We are afraid we might get canceled if we stand up for what we believe is true.  This is subtle, but it is deception, and over the years our fear to stand out or stand up has ultimately allowed evil to win.

Nashville - what if, what we did in response to this tragedy was fight back against evil? What if, we fought back by choosing to pursue holiness? What if, this became the catalyst that revives your heart?  What if we desired to be different from the world, and called evil what it was?  What if, we chose a life of obedience that leads to abundance versus living our lives being deceived and living a life of scarcity?

Nashville - Jesus is calling, Jesus wants to rescue us all from the deception of this world and set His children free to a life of abundance. There is a cost, it will not be easy. We will be criticized, looked down upon, and despised.  But we will know the difference between right and wrong, and we will see evil for what it is.  We will be free, to the joy of Evelyn, Hallie, William, Mike, Cynthia, and Katherine.  Oh Lord, give us eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to understand the Glory of the Lord.

To God be the Glory, Amen