Difficult times provide opportunities for all-too-rare people to show incredible character. I’ve been following the news a bit in the wake of the church shootings in Charleston – a horrific crime and tremendous injustice – and have been amazed at how the folks at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church are willing to offer forgiveness to the killer despite the loss of their friends and relatives.
Martin Luther, I think, would have commended them for the staunchness of their faith. It’s one thing to acknowledge what the Bible tells you to do, but still another to act on it. Perhaps that’s what the brave monk who, in 1517, posted his 95 Theses at the church at the Wittenberg Castle Church, was thinking about when he wrote the words:
That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth:
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.
A greater hope than that which this life offers awaits us, and it’s founded on the God who made it possible for all men (and women, and children) to be saved from their sin.
Here’s our new eight-bell arrangement of Martin Luther’s famous hymn, by the way.
