He stared at her for a long time before he said, “Welcome home.”
It felt natural when he ran a hand down her arm and took her hand long enough to lean forward and brush his lips over her cheek. She found herself closing her eyes and breathing in the smell of his aftershave. When he stepped away, she smiled up at him. “It sure felt like home when I came through the doors. Lots of changes, but so much the same. I even saw Miss Mabel.”
Jon’s eyes widened. “I loved Miss Mabel.”
“Everyone loves Miss Mabel. I was so jealous you two had her.” Ken gestured toward another part of the church. “I think she’s the regional favorite.”
Valerie settled into her chair next to Brad. She looked up as a screen lowered and covered the stage, then a series of photos filled that screen and the ones on either side of the stage. She recognized her parents, Buddy, Rosaline and Phillip Dixon, and the three other members of the team who had gone on that mission trip. Those three had returned. Her parents had not. Newspaper headlines came after the photos and the auditorium grew quiet.
“MISSIONARIES GUNNED DOWN IN DRIVE-BY”
“SUSPECTS IN CUSTODY IN FATAL SHOOTING”
“GANG VIOLENCE DOESN’T STOP FOR GOD”
“LOCAL CHURCH GRIEVES AS MISSION TURNS TO TRAGEDY”
Valerie expected to feel ambivalent about it. It’s not like she could remember her mother’s voice or her father’s laughter. Her entire life consisted of Buddy and the Dixons. However, as the music played and the photos and headlines appeared, a well of grief inside her heart broke open as if it had lain dormant for twenty-seven years just waiting for release.
Brad’s arm came around her shoulders as the tears poured from her eyes. She found as much comfort in his touch as she’d hoped, and she leaned into him.
The center screen rose, and, on the stage, she saw the musicians. In the front, holding a mic, she recognized Madison Brown. Gone was the disheveled nursing mom she’d met twenty minutes earlier. In her place stood a well-groomed, beautiful woman in a trendy outfit, sparkling jewelry, and well-applied makeup. She started singing a slow song to match the somber tone set by the headlines and photos. Out of the shadows of the stage stepped four other singers, but she alone remained in the spotlight.
Valerie found herself pulled into the music. Madison Brown clearly had a gift for singing and entertaining and Valerie caught herself clapping, singing along, and losing herself. They sang songs she didn’t recognize but enjoyed, and an old hymn she could have sung from memory.
As the congregation stopped to pray, Valerie did not bow her head but instead watched Danny come through the wings of the stage. He carried the baby, now dressed in a frilly pink dress with a sparkly bow somehow placed on her bald head. Madison scooped the baby out of his arms and gave him a gentle kiss on the lips before walking off the stage and taking a seat in the front row.
He straightened his suit, checked his mic, and picked his Bible up off one of the music stands. By the time the prayer ended, he stood in the center of the stage next to a glass podium.
“Today, we’re honoring a team of missionaries who left Atlanta to minister to a very poor neighborhood in our own country. We worry and pray for missionaries in countries hostile to our God, but it never occurs to us that the danger could find us here at home. Twenty-seven years ago this week, while serving in a mobile hospital in Los Angeles, Dr. Cecil Flynn and his wife and nurse Alison were gunned down in a drive-by shooting. Some teenagers affiliated with a gang had come to them seeking medical care. A rival gang chose that time to attack them while their guard was down. Cecil and Alison were inside the trailer with the teens, and they both sustained fatal wounds.”
The screens flipped to a muted newsreel video shot live at the time. Behind the commentator, the scene was one of carnage and bloodshed.
“It’s hard to reconcile that. Deuteronomy tells us that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds, and strength. Jesus affirmed this and added that we are also to love Him with all our souls. From everything I’ve ever heard about this couple from everyone who loved them, if anyone embodied a love for God more than Cecil and Alison, I’ve never met them. Their tragic deaths seem so senseless and unfair.
“We ask questions. How do people who love God so much get gunned down in the street? How do they leave a toddler to be raised by a grieving brother? How does that happen?”
He paused and Valerie caught her breath. She’d asked those questions all her life. Was he about to bring her revelation?
“It’s so hard for us to come to terms with death and tragedy. In our culture, especially, we treat death like it’s some kind of rare thing that almost never happens. Oh, so-and-so died at the young age of ninety-one, or did you hear that so-and-so lost her baby? And everyone who hears the news looks shocked and appalled as if no one is supposed to ever die. You say somebody died? That’s unheard of!
“The reality is, a hundred percent of us are going to die. Ten out of ten. Listen. Everyone who is born of woman dies. Even our Savior died on the cross that day on Golgotha. He died, church. I’m not talking about what happened a few days later. Now, keep up. I am talking about his human body bleeding and dying on the cross. Church, consider that for a moment.”
Pastor Brown set his Bible down and looked out into the congregation. In a low voice, he continued.
“When God created the world, He created perfection and harmony. It was Adam’s job to tend the garden with the woman—I said the woman, that’s right—the woman who had not yet been named Eve. At this point there’s no Eve. She actually received that name Eve, which means life, after they had been kicked out of the garden. At this point, they are still in the garden. So, when the serpent temptedthe woman, the Bible tells us Adam was ‘there with her.’ You hear that? There with her.
“A lot of people—mostly men, I’ll admit it—a lot of folks want to pretend Adam was off somewhere working and doing what he should have been doing. But scripture is clear. Adam was right there next to the woman and he was not protecting her from the serpent. And when the woman gave in to temptation, Adam went into it with her and did not step up to protect her and protect the creation God had charged him to husband and steward. The result was the fall and the destruction of that once perfect world. The fall is our inheritance, and this fallen world now groans under the weight of sin to this very day.”
Valerie had heard the story of creation since a very young age. She didn’t really know where Pastor Brown was going with this.
“We already know this. God didn’t create that sin. God didn’t force us into it. God didn’t create that darkness. In the beginning, God said ‘Let there be light’ and there was light, church. This darkness was not God. This was sin. Sin is filthy. Sin is darkness. But, oh, church, sin is seductive.
“Sin brings about the type of coveting and hate that creates groups of young people who war with other groups of young people. Throw in drugs. Toss in fornication and other vices. Rationalize it all with a secular worldview that makes each one his or her own god. Layer on some poverty, deep poverty that spans generations. The kind of generational poverty that winks at theft and deceit and a little bit of violence here and there ‘cause you gotta do what you gotta do to survive when you’re that poor. Right? Add racial tension. Add some grandstanding politician claiming to make this better when all they really want to do is alchemy. They just want to turn blood into gold; turn a profit off the misfortune of others. What does all that give you when you mix it all together?”
Pastor Brown bowed his head for a heartbeat then looked up and proclaimed, “You get a hot mix of explosives stored in a room full of sparks. Someone lit a spark that day twenty-seven years ago, and four people died just to end the lives of two with as much fanfare as possible. It leaves us all shaking our heads, sad and confused.
“But that was not God, church. God is not the author of confusion. That was darkness and sin. The Bible tells us that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. We are the followers of God, and He created this world. We Christ followers, we here in this church today, we are the ones who run counter to this world of sin and darkness. We aren’t the norm. We’re swimming against that dark tide.
