Truth

I stop and look at my beautiful son, gurgling and laughing and looking up at me, and I have this overwhelming tickle in my nose. The tickle I get when I try to hold tears back. The tears I get when I think of the victims, or those families of the victims of the Connecticut shooting, or the Oregon shooting, or the theater shooting, or any other tragic event.

I'm a mom and when it comes to children, well, the tickle is always there. I cannot fathom the depths of anguish those families must be experiencing. But I'm also a mom who, when it comes to children,  experiences a furious, raging anger ready to burn against those who would harm a hair on the head of a little one. I wonder sometimes, at this conflict of emotions that God has given to mothers. And I wonder what the love and sorrow and wrath of our Almighty God must be like, if these emotions are a mere reflection of His, and I think I understand a little more, the darkness that came when God's Son hung on a cross for the sake of the world.

Webster's 1828 Dictionary says, "to do truth is to practice what God commands. John 3." There is the well-known verse John 3:16, "for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

But what about the following verses? 

"For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God." John 3:17-21

This kind of darkness should cause us to stop. Stop and mourn with those who have lost. Stop and grieve for all of the broken people in the world. Stop and hug and kiss our children and be thankful for them. Stop and think about how blessed we truly are. Stop and think. 

We stopped today. We stopped and prayed for the families of the victims. For peace and comfort, and for truth and light. Because what is comfort without the truth? The truth is unchangeable. The truth comes to the light.