Emma and David

          I want to speak about a recent school shooting and oddly, I find myself having a difficult time identifying which one of the many shootings I am thinking about.  Each and every one of the incidents are enabled by powerful legislators who are puny of morals and bought by the gun lobbyists.  The children are always students simply going to school, innocently, working diligently at their  goals and enjoying school life as it should be.  Normal people find this kind of school violence abhorrent and know where to squarely put the blame.

       For Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg and others, that horrific day at Parkland was a rude awakening. The adults who are running the world abdicated their responsibility to keep them safe. The same adults and leaders enabled the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut. Yes, an Elementary school. Shame on legislators, shame on the NRA, shame on us all for our complacency and allowing this problem to go unchecked. Rampant violence against innocents.  But Emma and David are just whom I am reminded of today as I read Isaiah.  The passage notes about God that He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.

       Many times in life a voices raises and an activist is created by a baptism by fire. In the case of Emma and David, it was baptism , essentially, by firing squad. God raises up the most unlikely people and does not use human logic because even our best logic cannot compete or compare to the logic, wisdom and love of our Creator.

        In one of the other readings from today, Jesus is picking his disciples and he chooses several Fisherman. How odd.  Not whom I might go to as my first choices. In another passage, Scripture relates a time when the fisherman have toiled laboriously all night fishing and to no avail. Jesus ( the carpenter ) comes along and asks them to put their nets out one more time. Their catch almost sinks the boat. A carpenter is not who I would necessarily listen to if I were a professional fisherman.

          When we go about our daily lives, be wary of our judgments about whom God can call, raise up and have serve. Jesus chooses some unlikely people to major tasks. While we are remembering that, know also that we are all called to loving action on God's behalf. Thank you Emma and David.

Isaiah 40:25-31

To whom then will you compare me,
   or who is my equal? says the Holy One. 
Lift up your eyes on high and see:
   Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them,
   calling them all by name;
because he is great in strength,
   mighty in power,
   not one is missing. 

Why do you say, O Jacob,
   and speak, O Israel,
‘My way is hidden from the Lord,
   and my right is disregarded by my God’? 
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
   the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
   his understanding is unsearchable. 
He gives power to the faint,
   and strengthens the powerless. 
Even youths will faint and be weary,
   and the young will fall exhausted; 
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
   they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
   they shall walk and not faint.