Don't Give Up!

 The headline makes me ache in the soul. Two lives that survived the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida just took their own lives. Because they couldn't go on. 

And I hear it the same at church - an upcoming funeral for a recent high school graduate in my town that did the same. Because he couldn't go on either. 

All of them ran out of hope. And I feel it deep. 

Sometimes it truly does seem easier to quit than to keep on hoping. To keep on believing. To keep on trusting. Because sometimes, life's pain is just. that. bad. And we are just. that. desperate. And God seems to have left. But maybe we feel that way because we left God?

I try to breathe the words of Scripture deep into my soul as I sit in the wooden pews. The message is all about unbelief. Of how my Savior tried to convince religious elites that He was truth, He was life, He was the Way...but they couldn't see it. Wouldn't see it. Didn't believe He was what and who He said. And my eyes fall on my life verse which is in the very chapter the pastor is speaking from. And I remind myself that real Gospel-hope is never extinct. It is simply that our blind eyes refuse to notice it and believe that it's true. 

"Again Jesus spoke to them..."

And I realize how forgetful the human soul really is. Heart-amnesia really is a thing. And for all of history, all our great moral failings and all our despairings can be traced back to a lack of faith in the unseen workings of Grace. Lack of trust in the One who is behind everything. Who holds everything. Who holds you. 

We must continually be preached to. Because the Gospel doesn't often stick with us. And we fear because we have failed to recognize the Light in our darkness. We fear because we have chosen in that moment to view God as incapable. And we think there are limits to His reach - and that we are beyond them. 

Just maybe each of these beautiful lives felt the same and that's why they chose to give up? Could it be that I have, at times, thought of quitting too if not for the grace of God? 

"...saying, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12).

This. This is a promise I have clung to in the hardest hours. That those who follow a sovereign Savior will never be left without hope. His light is life. His light is breath. His light is hope. His light gives reason to face the darkness with defiant joy because He has triumphed over it once and for all. It is not a guarantee that darkness will not find us and all will be well all the time. We live in a world that is despairing and crying for purpose. Bad things happen. But it is a guarantee that we will not be left alone in the darkness and that the light of His life, by His grace, will sustain us. Will see us through. 

And in my worst moments, I've come back to this passage to remind myself that I am not left to suffer without meaning. God has not abandoned. And woe to me if, in my hopelessness, I make the choice to abandon God!

I think again of the two lives that took their own breath after witnessing the school shooting last year. Out of many whose lives were not spared that day, their's were. God brought them through once already. They were survivors. And somehow now, they couldn't believe that He could bring them through again. God gave them a second chance. And they chose to take it of their own accord. Because faith is just that fickle. And, if not sustained by grace, it will die. And we will die. 

Sweet families of these two! Worried sick their children had died that fateful day and grateful beyond measure they survived. Now having to face the horror that their children died anyway. Of broken hearts. Hearts that could not beat with hope anymore. Hearts that couldn't see through the darkness to God. Hearts that forgot His goodness. 

The pastor later reads in 1 John, and I see it come up yet again: 

"This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5).

And why not belt out this message from the highest places and in all the darkest spaces and tell all despairing souls this? Because this is why His light is life. Darkness has no place in God. And when we choose to look at at the darkness, we lose sight of the light. And the life starts to seep out of us. And we begin to lose belief. And those of us who have been given the Light are obligated to share the Light. To live the Light. To be the Light. Because this world thinks the darkness can't be overcome. And souls are losing hope. 

This is true as it is throughout all ages: forget the goodness of God, and you die. You die from thanklessness. You die from heart-amnesia. You die in the darkness. You die because the Light of His grace is your life-support. Give that up, and you've only got a short while until you're gone. 

It is Christ that lights us. And we then are His lights to the world. But we can't shine if we've failed to believe what we say. 

So many around us are giving up. Because they think there is no other option. But we know a holier way. A more hopeful way. And "we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls" (Hebrews 10:39). 

Believe, soul. Believe. Believe. Believe. Be not faith-less. And to such bravery God has called you. When you want to give up, look up. When you want to quit, notice the Light. And if you continue to walk in it, you will not die but live.