Will the flags ever fly at full staff again?

There is another shooting just now on the news.

Men in blue in Louisiana are gunned down, just a few days after a similar incident in Dallas. Families and friends are no doubt directly affected, and so are the men and women who go to work every day to protect us from ourselves.  And like you, I’m angry and sad at the same time, and a little numb.

When the protectors are unprotected, then we all feel vulnerable.

Why ask why?

For a few days we’ll wring our hands, trying to find some motivation. The anti-gun people will try to pinpoint the narrow way the shooter got his hands on a weapon and then broad-brush the other 100 million gun owners who would never dream of going on a rampage.

The anti-Muslim crowd will secretly hope for an ISIS connection, or a Louis Farrakhan directive. The atheists hope it will be a church goer. The left will hope it will be a white supremacist. The right will hope it will be someone who has flashed a black power fist.

Reporters will talk to his friends, his neighbors, his girlfriend. They’ll push microphones in front of the parents face, still stricken with shock that their son could be the one behind this.

The President will speak some words of comfort and then throw in a few pieces of meat because the high road is an unfamiliar path.

The candidates will weigh in, fingers pointing and chests puffed. One calling for tough guys to unite and the other calling for the government to just “do something.”

Thoughts and prayers will pour in from around the country and we’ll care until the next shock.

Flags will hang at half-staff for a few days, overlapping the last tragedy and perhaps the next tragedy.

What’s a Christian to do ?

To be honest, I’m helpless in all of this. And so are you. We’ll comment on facebook or shake our heads at the office tomorrow, offering our opinions. But really, none of us have an answer.

This is when verses like this jump out,

“You must realize, however, that in the last days difficult times will come.”

This is not a resignation to fatalism, but a call to the reality of the times. It’s moments like this when people of faith need to rise to the occasion by falling on our knees.

If  you want to call me weak, go ahead. But I’m praying because everything else we’re trying just isn’t working and that’s not such a bad place to start.