I remember when I was a student (yep, long memory...) up in the wilds of Newcastle. It had snowed and the ground was pretty icy. (It was probably June or July...) I stepped off the pavement to cross the road and slipped. It was one of those slow-motion moments where your brain has more than enough time to process the fact that: a) you are falling and there is nothing to grab on to, b) you really should have bought those better shoes and c) it’s going to hurt a lot anytime soon. As those thoughts unfurl I’m conscious that my feet have left the ground and that I’m in free-fall backwards.
Then it stopped. A friend with better footwear had stood behind me and caught me. Pushed me upright again. No pain, no predicted trip to A & E, not even the embarrassment of sprawling in the street. Just the amazing relief and euphoria of having escaped what seemed like the inevitable.
Fast forward thirty odd years. Front door is stiff, have to pull on the door knocker to get it closed far enough to lock the door. Been meaning to plane some wood off for a couple of weeks now. Give the knocker a good yank, it comes off in my hand and I go flying backwards. Same time-lapse sequence as before, but this time it’s Janet I’ve flown into and we now both go over backwards – except she is stopped by the hedge, and I am stopped by her. No damage to either of us, no pain, lots of laughter and a Janet shaped dent in the hedge. I put the door knocker back on and a couple of hours later go out to take the dead Christmas Tree to the recycling area in the local park. Try to shut door, won’t, so give big pull on door knocker.... This time there are no arms to stop me, no Janet or hedge to cushion fall. Fortunately the garden is soft after all the rain (remember the hose-pipe ban a few months ago?) and the result is laughter and a sense of my own ridiculousness.
I’ve felt like God reminding me of how God’s grace works. In the early days of faith, despite our unreformed character, we are close to the God we love. Close enough for His “wings” to enfold us and protect us (Ps 91). Even when we place ourselves in danger, He is there, mitigating our folly, standing behind the foolish student with the dodgy shoes, waiting and ready to catch when he inevitably slips and falls... We may have chosen the wrong shoes, but we’re still near enough to be caught...
But so often then, we continue to ignore the warnings. Having been caught and saved we keep presuming that we can go on making foolish, lazy choices. We still don’t buy the right shoes, or having been spared injury by our wife and a hedge, we still don’t sort out the door. In our heart we say “God saved me last time, he loves me, He will save me next time” As Paul puts it “...we sin all the more that grace might abound...”
We start out close to God’s heart, right by His side. But when we act outside His character, when we ignore the warnings, we move further and further from His heart, further from His side, becoming more distant from His protection. Even then, He does what he can to save, but our distance limits His options. So, when we pull off the door-knocker we go flying, there’s no-one around to catch us, there’s not even someone to act as a cushion. Just the ground. God still loves us, still longs to protect us and we may find that even now, the ground is soft and the only injury is to our pride.
But what if then, I still don’t plane the door, what if I persist even after all this, in my presumption of grace? Well, God’s heart towards me doesn’t change – he still loves me, still yearns to protect. But I have moved myself completely outside of His shelter. My choices remove permission for Him to help. Today, as I close the door, if I haven’t responded to his grace, to the opportunity to change, I can no longer rely on people or soft ground to mitigate my folly.
We see this in the People of Israel. Their calling was to be distinctive, different to the nations around. For generations God warned, cajoled, protected, gave them victory, despite them rejecting His plan for them to be “blessed to be a blessing”. He sent prophets to remind them, He used world events to highlight it, He gave them law and scripture to reveal His love and desire for them. But they would not listen. They grew used to His grace saving them, they relied on it, presumed on it. “We are God’s people, nothing really bad can happen to us.”They continued to make ungodly choices, believing in their pride that God would continue to dig them out of the messes that they got into – that there would never be any real consequence to their choice.
But in their folly they moved themselves further and further from where God was, from where His heart always is. They removed themselves from protection. Ultimately they get what their persistent lifestyle had chosen. God had called them to be distinctive from the other nations, they chose to be the same as the other nations. Eventually, ten out of the twelve tribes get exactly what they had asked for down the generations. They become so like the other nations that they become absorbed into them, becoming lost as a people group to history.
And so to Connecticut. Did God want those kids to die in the school shooting? Was it part of His divine plan? Was it a judgment against something that offended Him? If God is love and love means anything close to what Paul describes in Corinthians, the answer is categorically ‘no’. Why then did He not intervene and prevent it?
Scripture suggests that He longed to. That everything in Him cried out to act. That such things represent the saddest, most heart-breaking moments for a God of love. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem” cried Jesus “How I longed to gather you into my arms. But you would not let me”. Everything within the Father wanted to intervene as His son was brutally murdered. Everything within the Father wanted to intervene that awful day in Connecticut. But then as now, human choices constrain grace. Eventually, we, and so often, the powerless, face the terrible and tragic consequences of our folly.
Might it be that, at least in part, the choices made down the generations to uphold the ‘right’ to bear arms, disabled Almighty God from doing what His heart longed to do? Time and again the warning signs and indeed similar tragedies have revealed, what to most of the world is the blindingly obvious, that the availability of guns is a contributing factor. Time and again, pride has blinded (the latest response being to have armed guards in schools as opposed to changing the gun laws), each decision a step moving us out from under His wings....
These aren’t the acts of a wrathful God, they aren’t in some perverse way what God wanted. The awful reality is that we chose a society in which it can happen, then moved out of God’s protection from the folly of that choice.
Nor did God did have these children killed out of anger or in a fit of wrathful judgement – judgement is not executed on the vulnerable, the helpless, but on those who for generations have had light, had grace but who have squandered it in pride and wilfulness. Ezekiel 33 warns those who could and should have acted but who didn’t that the blood of those who died needlessly will be required of them.
Perhaps in their evangelical zeal, the NRA might want to reflect on that.
And in the meantime, I’ve borrowed an electric plane from my co-blogger.
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