As I wake up this morning to the news of last night’s shooting in Dallas, I am yet again saddened.  I am saddened for the loss of life.  I am saddened for the families.  I am saddened that there will be a void in the lives of some, a vacancy once occupied by a dear loved one…a husband, a wife, a sister, a brother, a friend, a neighbor, a mother, a father.  I am saddened by the state of our country.  I am saddened that this story has repeated itself so often.  I am saddened that I must once again sit down with my children and forcibly pry their eyes open just a bit more to show them the reality of the world.  I steal a bit of their innocence every single time we have these talks.

I’ve had a lot of practice of late in finding ways to accurately yet compassionately tell my children about the news of the day…Minnesota, Louisiana, Orlando…the list goes on.  Today it is Dallas.  Yet this morning, in the quietness of a still sleeping house, as I try to rehearse in my head the words I will use to inform them of the events in Dallas, my heart is burdened by one question:  Where is the respect and value of human life in our society?  Where has it gone?

Expendable.  I fear that is how life is viewed.  Simply expendable.

The weapons of this world are devastating when used for evil.  Yet there is a weapon more powerful than any firearm, more devastating than any weapon fashioned by man.  It is the human heart.  For pent up within the human heart are all kinds of evils.  The Lord has known what we sometimes prefer not to acknowledge:

“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick;  Who can understand it?”  Jeremiah 17:9

There is no law that will change the heart.  No legislation will contain what is stored up within.  The heart is the true issue.

For decades our society has taught and legislated that life is indeed expendable… from the tiniest of lives formed at conception to the gray-haired generation nearing their last days.  “Inconvenient” life can simply be discarded, forgotten, taken.  How is it that we are remotely surprised at where our society is?

What is the solution to this sad state of affairs?  Thankfully there is one plan whose goal is to capture, heal, and restore the broken.  It is a plan to take the dark heart and its evil ways and make it new.  Salvation through Jesus Christ.  Period.  Nothing less will do.  Nothing less will make a change.

Dear God have mercy on us.  Heal our land…heal our hearts.