Someone will probably say that I don’t really get what’s going on. I think I do. I read enough to know I do.
I’ve been on the road this year more than any other year. At this point in my life, I like staying home, but this year, I’ve had to go out more, and our church is better prepared than ever for that to occur. It’s still a stress on our church and school when I leave, and especially when I go with my wife. The lives at our church and school matter to me. The lives of the people who live in our area matter to me.
We’re on the road right now in Colorado Springs, CO, because my son is based in Fort Carson, and his window of return from deployment from the Middle East was from Oct 31 to Nov 3. With these deployments, something I would not have known, you don’t know when the folks are getting back, but within a week, they give you a window. Your loved one can’t tell you either. I guessed and bought plane tickets, and then got the information for the window and it was when I got the tickets. Yesterday morning we heard an indefinite 10am meeting. That changed in the afternoon to 6:30am. I can say all this because it’s already public now and security is always tight.
I’m setting the stage a little. Sunday afternoon, while my wife and I were gone, we had a violin recital at our church building. A few in our church played, including our daughter. My daughters took care of making sure the auditorium was being set up for the recital. One of our deacon’s daughter also plays in the recital and during the recital, he got a call from work, so he walked out to take the call, and a gang was loitering in our parking lot, looking in the windows of the cars of the people at the recital. He told them they needed to leave, move along.
These youngsters, teenagers, believed that their lives and their things mattered more than those at the recital, so after they left, and our deacon walked back in, they came back and broke the back window of my car, that my daughters took to the recital. There was nothing of value inside, but they were either trying to get something quickly or they were just ticked-off that they weren’t being allowed to continue to look in car windows.
Everyone in the recital afterwards walked out to our car and were saddened about what they did to our car. The deacon helped my daughters vacuum the broken glass. Later that night my daughters put the plastic over the hole in the car and parked it in our garage. No one can use it until we get back. Our lives didn’t matter. Our things didn’t matter. This is the message young people take from a movement that says only certain lives matter. Since only their lives matter, they can do what they want with our lives and our things.
The above isn’t new for us. Since I’ve been in California, our church has been robbed or vandalized at least 25 times by people who don’t think other lives matter. There is a threat in the air more than I’ve ever seen. In addition to your life and things not mattering, you can’t have or at least carry a gun to protect it. If you did protect it, these other lives would matter more to society as well. It’s not just the police that don’t matter, but it’s anyone who tells them what to do, any kind of authority. If you say, put that cell phone away in class (not in our school, we don’t have that problem), you are in trouble, because their lives matter more than yours. It’s a very bad precedent.
If lives really matter, we would stop abortion. Most often, the people who say their lives matter more, don’t care enough for the lives of the unborn, the most helpless in society. The lives of the unborn matter less in a significant way. The lives of youngsters killed in the streets don’t seem to matter as much as the lives of those who have been inconvenienced by someone who says they have to stop looking in the windows of people’s cars in the parking lot. I’ll get back from seeing my son from deployment tonight. It’s 4:08am right now in Colorado Springs.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll have to take my car to replace a window. It didn’t matter to someone whose life mattered more than mine and whose things are more important than my things. Does that matter to me? It does. I can say the value of my life isn’t wrapped up in that window or anything else that I possess. My net value doesn’t change one bit, because it is found in Jesus, but Jesus knows the value of every life. Every life matters to Him.
Hi Pastor Brandenburg,
Wow. As you know, I'm from the Bay Area and there have long been tensions, but rarely of the magnitude that I hear of now most regularly. There was actually a time in the early 2000's when it seemed like it was getting better. It seems like those high places have not only been reinstated, but fortified, and it concerns me greatly.
Here in Asia I perceive an ethnocentricity unprecedented in my life-time (I'm not that old you know…) My wife is a national, and she agrees. The country in which I'm now serving has become increasingly nationalistic, and there is a group desiring of power which has a philosophy that their lives matter more than other's. They are growing in support and popularity. Praise The Lord, He is no respecter of persons. However, He is a respecter of spirit and this spirit which you write of is wicked and rebellious. If there was ever a time to get out there and share The Gospel with others now is the time!
Thanks for the update, I'm grateful that The Lord has kept you safe,
Bro. Evan