At least 1o people were shot in Alabama yesterday.  16 people were shot today in Germany, about 70 miles from where I live. 

I think it’s true of most everything in life that once you have a personal attachment/encounter with something, you’re much more aware every time it happens.  This is now true of shootings.  In fall on 2007 my former high school experienced a school shooting where luckily no one was injured or killed.  All the same… during the shooting I remember talking on the phone to my best friend destiny while she was in the portable next door to the building where the shooter was.  I remember the panic in the air when i found out a shooting was going on: were all my friends safe?  who was the shooter?  did I know them?  why was this happening?  how was it affecting everyone?

Now, whenever I hear of school shootings they affect me on a much more personal level.  I can’t help but feeling physical pain in my chest as I hear the news.  My heart literally hurts.  It’s not just the fact that people are dying… thats obviously a large part of it…. but it’s the notion of WHY is this happening.  Each occurence like this is just a heart-breaking reminder to me that we are all broken broken people who need a remedy, who need truth.  I know a common reaction is to be mad at the shooter, or perhaps even hateful toward the shooter.  this must be a natural response.  but although i feel this hatred, i even further just feel pain.  How is it that the devil can lie and twist the truth so much in someone’s life that they get to a point where they snap like that?  How can man, which once was good, have fallen so far to perform acts of hatred and pain like this?  I don’t know… but it makes me hurt inside.  This world is such a broken messy place full of people who need the healing truth of Christ so badly.  It hurts me to see and hear of “incidents” like this… because it shows that people have arrived at a place of epitomising their brokenness, and that hurts the most because i know and feel the hope that is available. 

I heard about these episodes of broken people in this broken world this morning, and I’ve hard the lyrics from David Crowder’s song, Remedy, flashing through my mind all day since then:

Here we are
Here we are
The broken and used
Mistreated, abused
Here we are

Here You are
Here You are
The beautiful one
Who came like a Son
Here You are

So we lift up our voices
We open our hands
To cling to the love
That we can’t comprehend

Oh, lift up your voices
And lift up your heads
To sing of the love
That has freed us from sin

He is the one
Who has saved us
He is the one
Who embraced us
He is the one who has come
And is coming again
He’s the remedy

Here we are
Here we are
Bandaged and bruised
Awaiting a cure
Here we are

Here You are
Here You are
Our beautiful King
Bringing relief
Here You are with us

So we lift up our voices
And open our hands
Let go of the things
That have kept us from Him

He is the one
Who has saved us
He is the one
Who forgave us
He is the one who has come
And is coming again
He’s the remedy

Oh, I can’t comprehend
I can’t take it all in
Never understand
Such perfect love come
For the broken and beat
For the wounded and weak
Oh, come fall at His feet
He’s the remedy
He’s the remedy

So sing, sing

You are the one
Who has saved us
You are the one
Who forgave us
You are the one who has come
And is coming again
To make it alright
Oh, to make it alright
You’re the remedy
Oh, in us
You’re the remedy

Let us be the remedy
Let us bring the remedy

 

So.  Here we are. a broken people.  but I and others have met a hope in Christ which serves as a remedy.  Let us embody the remedy.  But in being the remedy, we must be a compassionate people as we suffer with them in their brokennes.  As their hurts become our hurts, we will begin to grow together in this broken world and we can begin to live with love and hope.