this is not business as usual

The bishop of the Mississippi Conference of the United Methodist Church, James Swanson--our bishop is a preacher.

Bishop Swanson's supposed to make 'a few opening remarks', and he preaches. Bishop Swanson's supposed to deliver a report, and he preaches. Bishop Swanson's supposed to preach, and oh does he preach. He's just a preacher.

So, when we had our Annual Conference this weekend, and all the Methodist ministers and members of churches across the state gathered for prayer and teaching and business, we heard the bishop preach. Many times.

And it was exciting! Not just because he's an energetic preacher--a fiery preacher!--or because of how he gushes with enthusiasm and conviction. All of that can make for exciting preaching, but I was really excited about something else. The highlight of Bishop Swanson's preaching didn't come when he told a moving story from post-Apartheid South Africa, or when he was screaming and spinning in circles. The highlight came when he was calling the Church in Mississippi mission--to love, to generosity, to justice, and to sanctification--and he said "this is not business as usual."

So much about Annual Conference is business as usual. We're voting on resolutions and constitutional amendments, making recommendations, referring things to committees, administrating--we're following Robert's Rules! But what if the life of the church, the church at mission in our state and our world, weren't just 'business as usual'?

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What would that look like for your congregation, in your community? Imagine with me here: if the church could make one change, start doing one thing--anything at all--what would you hope to see?
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Going into Annual Conference, I was pretty underwhelmed (to say the least) by this year's theme: "The POWER of We." Every time the theme came up, it sounded like a celebration of what we can do if we just put our minds/hands to it: 'prepare to be energized by the POWER of We!' 'This world can be transformed by the POWER of We!' 'Think big: we can do it by the POWER of We!' And on and on and on, with lots of exclamations points, lots of 'we's, and zero Jesus, zero Holy Spirit. Pretty disheartening stuff.
And then Bishop Swanson preached: he preached on Acts 2, where the apostles achieved these astonishing and downright heroic acts of faith and love (see 2:42-47), and how all of this was only possible because they had received the power of the Holy Spirit (1:8; 2:1-4). The power, the bishop reminded us, did not belong to the church, but came through there relationship to the Spirit: "There is no 'we' without this power... We cannot do anything without the power of the Holy Spirit." But when we're open to the Spirit, renewal comes in the Church.

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What is the Spirit doing in your church now? How else might the Spirit empower your church for mission in the world? What could happen if we were open to the power of the Holy Spirit?
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In a series of messages, the Bishop clearly laid out the Church's call to love, to generosity, to justice, and to apprenticeship--helping each other grow. These are four of the fundamental ways in which the Church, United Methodist or otherwise, can make God's love and grace manifest in our world. The Mississippi Conference leadership, we were assured over and over this weekend, aren't going to tell us 'how to do church', how to undertake this mission in our setting; the churches know best about the people and the needs where we are. We need to feel free to listen to our Lord's leadings, to receive the Spirit's power and direction, and to obey, and serve those around us.

So... how are we going to do it? How are you going to do it? How is God calling you and your church to love people, to give generously where there are needs, to insist on justice when you're faced with injustices, and to grow in grace together? The church, in the power of the Spirit, doesn't have to be business as usual. What should it be?

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What is your church doing that needs to be celebrated? What does the church need to start doing? Where does the church need to be a presence, be at work, in your community? What would it take to make that happen?

reading the Bible

The pollsters at the Barna group just announced the results of a survey about what Americans are reading.

Most of the questions seemed to revolve around a few popular books or books recently adapted into movies, like The Hunger Games, The Hobbit, or Life of Pi, but Barna also asked about the Bible: how many people claim to have read the entire Bible? What generations are these readers from? What faith do they claim?

Honestly, I found the results surprising all around.
20% of American adults claim to have read the Bible all the way through. That would be pretty impressive to me. I've known a lot of folks, evangelicals, who will use a One-Year Bible or a similar reading plan, and so, with a little discipline, they'll get through the book in a matter of time. And I'm sure a lot of other people, like myself, have gotten all the way through the Bible by a more... roundabout... and drawn out process. It was probably eight years of reading here and there--oh! I've never heard of this book, better read it too--and rereading this or that, before I got through the entire Bible. If it took me that long, someone who really enjoys reading and studying scripture and who thinks it's of vital importance to his life, I can't imagine how people who don't enjoy reading the Bible or who don't have a religious impetus for reading it could get through.

A lot of these people are non-Christians. 18% of Americans who claim a faith other than Christianity, and 9% of Americans who claim no faith at all, say they've read the Bible. (Now, I'm assuming Mormons would be 'non-Christian' by Barna's standards--though I could be wrong on that--and so the number of individuals of other faiths who've read the Bible might be less surprising than it looks at first blush.)
My first reaction to this was: 'Huh. And how many Christians have read the Quran?' Or any other non-Christian holy books, for that matter? (And you can't count the Hebrew Bible. That's cheating.) I had to read some things majoring in religion at a public university, but otherwise I'm not so sure I'd have ever read texts like the Bhagavad-Gita or the Yoga Sutra. I'd love to see some more numbers comparing the inter-faith reading of different groups, because this sure leaves me feeling like Christians are going to be the least interested in learning about other beliefs.

You can check out the rest of the results here.

Like I said, these results surprised me. Frankly, the '1 in 5 have read the Bible' actually sounds a little questionable. 1 in 5 Americans have read Leviticus? They've read 1 Chronicles 1-9? 1 in 5 have read every word of the Psalms, of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel? I find this more than a little hard to believe. Surely, surely, there's a degree of  'oh, sure, I've read the Bible!' affecting those results. Sometimes, when a book or author is so influential and so talked-about, I think it's easy to assume you've read them, feel like you must have read them, even if you haven't. But I'm just speculating here--maybe these numbers are right on.

I hope people do read the Bible, though.
One of my aims in preaching and teaching is to get people interested in it and excited about it--because I think it's an interesting and exciting book (which is helpful when it's also very long and absolutely essential!).
I told a group once that I think the Bible is a bit like Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. We assume we know the character--we've seen the Disney cartoon, or we've read an abridged, children's version of the tale. Quasimodo is the kindly, lonely, misunderstood bell-ringer of Notre Dame. And he has quite a singing voice. Yet when you read Victor Hugo's classic, you find that the hunchback is much less Disney, much less kid-friendly, than you thought. He's grittier, more real. For instance: not only does he not sing, but he barely speaks, because years of ringing the cathedral bells has left him deaf--he uses sign language.

The Bible's grittier and more real than you'd expect. It's not the collection of brightly-colored kids' stories you learned about in Sunday school. And like Hunchback, the Bible's more stirring and more beautiful than the popular conceptions floating around could ever convey. I hope people read it.

How about you? What do you think of these numbers? Have you read the Bible all the way through? How did you do it? What made it difficult? What could help?
Have you read any sacred books from other faiths?

thanks for the reminder, God

Last week I was on vacation. I spent a great deal of time reading books, playing cards, visiting an aquarium, and watching The Office.
It was a good trip. I thought I might have some deep reflections to share upon my return home: deep reflections about the importance of rest; deep reflections about taking time to enjoy the world around you; deep reflections about resisting the urge to let work and accomplishments define you.

I have no deep reflections from the trip.

But this morning--well let me tell you what happened this morning.

I got to the the office like I do every Monday, and I started catching up on mail and messages from last week. Among other things, I looked at the attendance sheets people fill out in our Sunday services, and the visitor cards.
And the Sunday I was out, we may have had the most visitors of all the weeks I've been serving here. Visitors, people I hadn't seen in a few weeks and missed, people who can only make it around occasionally, or who visit every now and then--and folks who may have just given the church its one chance... and I missed every single one of them.

First reaction:
You've got to be kidding me. What the heck?
... Really. What the heck?

I'm out one freaking week, and all of these people I would love to see and love to connect with are here. Way to not realize that May 12th (Mother's Day!) is the big visitor Sunday of the year. Apparently. Way to schedule your vacation like an idiot.

Second reaction (after taking a break to walk around the church and pray for a few minutes):
I'm really glad all of these people were here that Sunday. I hope they experienced God's grace in worship. I'm glad there are dependable people I can ask to lead the service while I'm gone, and that those people were leading it that week. I'm glad the visitors were able to encounter this congregation and not just the guy who's assigned here for a few years and then leaves--oh, and apparently believes that his presence here on Sunday morning is super important.

Because it is... and it isn't.
I play a big role at Grace, a prominent role, and the Lord can use me in powerful ways. But it's the Lord doing that work, not me. In ministry, "neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth." (1 Cor 3:7) Different servants come--some of whom also have very prominent roles--and we all work towards the same goal, but our Lord accomplishes the work. And I don't think God was on vacation that week.
Last Sunday, some of God's other servants had a chance to work in ways they might not get to every week. Yesterday, I was back: making announcements, leading prayers, preaching. Either way, both weeks, only God gives the growth.

I'm thankful that the folks I missed weren't missed. It doesn't much matter that they couldn't hear a Nance Hixon sermon (some of my preaching, people probably would be better off without!) or shake Nance Hixon's hand on the way out of the church. The Holy Spirit, whom I pray works through my efforts, was present and at work through the efforts of others, and I've got to learn to trust that.

Thanks for the reminder, God.

Bangladesh and "Babylonian" economics

Somehow - God's grace - with everything else happening in the world, news concerning the grisly garment factory collapse in Bangladesh on April 24th is still making headlines. Yesterday, Time released a photograph from the scene of the collapse, where two workers died embracing each other as the building came down around them (you can see the image by following the link; given the content, I decided not to post it here). The photographer, who was present all day following the catastrophe, writes: "Every time I look back to this photo, I feel uncomfortable - it haunts me. It's as if they are saying to me, we are not a number - not only cheap labor and cheap lives. We are human beings like you. Our life is precious like yours, and our dreams are precious too."

According to the last report I saw, 794 men and women are believed to have died in the collapse--and I expect that total will continue to rise.

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We've just finished studying the book of Revelation at Grace UMC, and one thing I was only able to address briefly is Revelation's judgment on the economics of ancient Rome. You see this most clearly in Revelation 18, where we hear of the fall of "Babylon," John's name for Rome (a city famously built on seven hills - see Rev 17:9), and we get a glimpse of "the power of her luxury" (18:3). For instance, listen to Revelation 18:11-14, one response to Babylon's destruction:

And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves--and human lives.
"The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your dainties and your splendor are lost to you, never to be found again!"

The longer John's catalog of cargo goes on, the clearer it is that John's not impressed by these 'goods'. Luxury turns into monotony. These are but "dainties and splendor," which God's judgment has wiped away.
But not only is this evidence that Babylon has "glorified herself and lived luxuriously" (18:7), this is also evidence of Babylon's "exploitation of the wealth of her empire at her subjects' expense."* The problem is not just the luxurious living, but also the oppressive economics that supported Rome's comfort. That's most obvious with the references to "slaves--and human lives," but people living in the Roman Empire in the 1st century, the people John was writing Revelation for, would know, often firsthand, about the extent of Rome's exploitation of the lands she conquered. This went beyond slavery. In a famous speech before battle with Roman forces, a Celtic chieftain from this time, named Calgacus, denounced the Romans as the "robbers of the world." They plunder, butcher, and steal, he said, and they misname all of this "empire." This was the source of her luxury: the oppression and plundering of the lands and peoples under her influence. And the first readers of Revelation, those living in the Roman empire, to whom John was writing, would have known this as they read through the catalogs of stolen goods.

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Last week, in response to the factory collapse in Bangladesh, a piece by Wendy McMahan appeared on Christianity Today asking the Church to face the hard truths of how the cheap goods we enjoy in the US today often come at a frightening price to the workers producing them. "We need to stop and consider," she writes, "how most of us have supported an industry that lets people work in these dangerous conditions."

Read it here: Ignoring Worker Injustice Won't Make It Go Away.

Our spending, she suggests, ultimately shows that "we tend to care more about the price of our clothing than the conditions under which they are made." This is partly because we are so far removed from these people: "I will never meet my seamstress."
Yet, she insists, there's another factor we cannot ignore: that we have failed to love. "My sin against her is that I have loved myself too much, and her too little."

Our failure to love these neighbors, I believe, makes us no different than Babylon, exploiting the nations of the world so we can revel in our luxury and splendor. We have supported an economic system that routinely sends people into unsafe conditions to work long hours for stunningly low wages. Our demands for cheap products leave countless, faceless workers in a vicious cycle of low wages, non-existent benefits, and even, occasionally, factory fires or building collapses. (I've written about some of these issues before, focusing on Chinese manufacturing: the China price and me.) And if we can ignore these occasional news stories long enough, they'll go away, and we can move on.

Well, Revelation calls believers to stop ignoring it, to come out of Babylon and take no part in her sins (18:4). Christians cannot remain comfortable consumers in a system that abuses our neighbors across the globe, just so long as we can get our goods. That's Babylon's way; that's not the way of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. And we're called to follow the Lamb, to love our neighbors, to look out for their needs and their good.

So we have to find an alternative.

For a start, we can listen to the suggestions Wendy McMahan makes in her CT article. These may seem pretty obvious, but if we took them seriously they would radically alter the way we do our shopping:

1) "Support clothing companies that treat their workers well."
One resource she recommends is The Better World Shopper. This organization offers information to guide your purchases on their website, with a smart phone app, and through a book. Another resource on fair trade is Trade as One, a Christian organization that "has been advocating consumer justice for years."

2) "Buy less new clothing."
Her advise here is great, and simple:

The overstuffed drawers and closets in my house just might be a sign that my family doesn't need every piece of clothing that we own. We certainly don't need more. Buying less also allows us to invest more on fewer items produced under just and ethical conditions, rather than paying for piece after piece of cheap clothing. Plus, there are always thrift shops. Buying secondhand is resourceful and doesn't demand new supplies or labor be used for our clothing.

Finally,
3) "Give to programs that offer workers another option."
She leaves it to us to find out the best resources here, but the fact is, in Bangladesh and in other countries across the world there are organizations working to provide better opportunities for those otherwise consigned to a life of factory work--and we can help support their efforts.

If we took these suggestions seriously, they would make a strong start to a new way of life as consumers--and Christians who are entwined in economics that abuse our neighbors, "Babylonian" economics, we have to find a new way. We have to try and love our distant, nameless neighbors, even though it takes more effort, costs more money. That's just what it involves, following the Lamb out of Babylon.

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* This description comes from the New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham, in The Theology of the Book of Revelation, p. 135.

preparing to encounter God

At Grace UMC we receive communion once a month, on the first Sunday of each month (plus the occasional special service, like Holy Thursday). Compared to some churches, this is pretty infrequent, but compared to my experience growing up, where we might celebrate the Lord's Supper three or four times a year, once a month is treasure for which I'm so thankful.

I'm thankful because I find communion to be a powerful, life-giving experience. I'm thankful because I believe something truly miraculous happens at the Lord's table: we encounter Jesus Christ--"this is my body" means that is his body, and "this is my blood" means that is his blood. There's nothing magic about the service or the words I say there, but when I pray for the Holy Spirit to touch the bread and the cup to "make them be for us the body and blood of Christ," the Spirit uses that time and those elements to connect us to Jesus.

I could spill a lot of digital ink here over why I believe these things and what exactly they mean, but that's not my aim right now. Instead, I have a question for those of us who will be kneeling this Sunday morning with our hands out to receive a piece of bread. If this moment and this sacrament uniquely and powerfully connect us to Jesus through the Holy Spirit, how are we going to prepare for this?

Thomas a' Kempis, in his classic devotional book, The Imitation of Christ, forces his readers to face this question. Jesus invites us, sinners, weary and burdened, to come to him (Matt 11:28). Jesus instituted the practice of communion at the Last Supper so that we could have an established means of drawing near to him and encountering him--he didn't leave us without a way to find him. At this table, we find grace, our souls are restored, and "the beauty destroyed by sin returns again"! And yet, how do we prepare ourselves to receive this gift?

Moses, he points out, made the Ark of the Covenant "out of imperishable wood, overlaying it with the purest gold," to place the two tablets of the Law, the Ten Commandments, inside. "Then how shall I, a corrupt and perishable creature, dare so lightly to receive the Maker of the Law and the Giver of life" at communion?
King Solomon spent seven years building "a resplendent temple, for the worship of Your Name, the dedication of which was celebrated for eight days; a thousand peace offerings were sacrificed - and with great solemnity and rejoicing - and accompanied by the sound of trumpets." And yet I, he goes on, who can barely devote myself to you for half an hour, shall I invite your very presence at the altar?
"O my God, how much did those great persons of the Old Testament do to please You! How little I do and how short is the time I give to prepare myself for the reception of Holy Communion!"

How are you going to prepare yourself for Holy Communion this Sunday?
Maybe you should take some time to pray that God would "cleanse the thoughts of our hearts" for an encounter with Jesus.
Maybe you could read over the story of Christ's execution in one of the gospels, to remember the cost he paid with his body and blood so that we could be saved.
Or maybe you could just use some time of quiet, to let the voices in your mind fall silent and let the distractions fade away, so that you can focus and appreciate what's happening at that table and that kneeling rail.

Whatever you need to do, just do it. This week, let's try to honor God with some fore-thought and some preparation. You just might find that all of your hurried experiences of grace at communion were only the tip of the iceberg.

But.

As important as preparation is, and as seriously as we ought to take it, we can't forget that the Lord's table is first and foremost place of grace--and that means you don't have to earn a spot at it.
a' Kempis makes the point powerfully in an imaginative dialogue between Jesus and a follower of Christ. "You must realize," Jesus says, "that you cannot make adequate preparation for Me through your own merits, even if you prepared yourself for an entire year with your mind on nothing else. It is through My generosity and grace that you are allowed to approach my table."
Because we only come to the table by Christ's generosity and grace, he can say: "Do the best you can and as well as you can... I am He Who has invited you, and I have commanded this Sacrament to be; therefore, I will make up for whatever is lacking in you. Come, then, and receive Me."

Prepare yourself to come to the table. But remember, we approach by grace, so however unprepared or unworthy you feel, Jesus welcomes you still. He'll make up for whatever we lack.

So let's come, then, and receive him.

rethink Creation

I recently had a chance to read a really good little book, Making Peace with the Land: God's Call to Reconcile with Creation, co-authored by Norman Wirzba and Fred Bahnson. Wirzba is a professor at my alma mater, Duke Divinity, where he teaches courses like "Caring for Creation" and "Food, Eating and the Life of Faith." Fred Bahnson is a writer, gardner, and cofounder of Anathoth Community Garden in Cedar Grove, NC.

Occasionally the books seems to drift from its biblical moorings, but for the most part Making Peace with the Land is a really fascinating and compelling attempt to take seriously Paul's claim in Colossians 1:20, that "through him [Jesus] God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven." God's work in Jesus wasn't just meant to reconcile humanity to God, but all created things. All things were made through him and for him (1:16), and so all things are reconciled by him too. Wirzba and Bahnson make this point early and spend the rest of the book trying to help us think about what that might mean for our relationship to the planet and to show us what that might look like in practice - how the ways we live might "proclaim the good news to the whole creation" (Mark 16:15).
The ways these two draw out Paul's claim and the recommendations they make for Christian living in light of Paul's claim might surprise you, but it's a powerful message. If you really want to dig into, you'll have to check out the book for yourself. Today I just wanted to draw our attention to one part of the book that struck a chord with me.

In chapter 5, Wirzba (the duo trade off writing chapters) suggests that we need to recognize that God's different creatures on this earth all depend on each other for life - "creation forms a vast and indescribably complex and organic whole." And there's an implication here that we can't afford to miss:

Humanity is only one member within this creation. It does not all exist for our exclusive benefit. As God reminded Job, the earth is full of creatures that are of no use to us but are of intimate concern to God: "Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God, and wander about for lack of food?" (Job 38:41) It contains creatures like the mighty Leviathan, which can kill us but is a particular delight to God: "I will not keep silence concerning its limbs, or its mighty strength, or its splendid frame" (Job 41:12). [p. 127]

"Creation," he concludes, "exists for our health and nurture, but it is not made for our exclusive enjoyment" [128] - or, I would add, for our exclusive use. God created this world and everything in it, and he takes joy in what he made, cares for what he made. Unfortunately, our standard practices with modern, industrial agriculture (a topic the book focuses on) don't consider the world as God's creation. Instead, the world is viewed merely as a resource: it exists solely to fulfill whatever purposes we deem fit. From this perspective, it's much easier to lose sight of (or ignore) the harm our agricultural practices do to the soil, water, plants, animals, and ecosystems of a place. There are similar effects when we simply don't spend time in nature - holed up in our cities, busy with work, distracted with gadgets - and don't have to recognize or face the consequences of our constant pollution, littering, our landfills, or development. But we don't live in a world created to hold our trash or provide nice locations for our homes and roads. We live in a world created by God for his pleasure, a world he called good (Gen 1), a planet that both manifests his blessings and love (Ps 104:10-18, 27-30) and offers back praise to him (Ps 96:11-13). Given the ways we often think about the world, and given the ways the Bible often describes the world, it seems that Christians need to start thinking about creation differently. Maybe Bahnson and Wirzba are right, and when God "took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it" (Gen 2:15), that was "an invitation to know and share in God's love for the whole creation" [p. 18] - an invitation that Christians in the 21st century need to take very seriously.

Today, April 22nd, is Earth Day. Christians haven't always seen this as a holiday for them, but we can, and we should. "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it" (Ps 24:1). We need to stretch our imaginations so that we do think of the earth as the Lord's and Earth Day, when people emphasize our responsibility to care for the earth, as a properly Christian holiday.

As we try to rethink Creation and rethink our relationship to this world, as we consider our task of caring for Creation on this Earth Day, I want to leave us with two questions Dr. Wirzba asks early on in the book - questions that I think are provocative in all the right ways. Take these with you and consider them well; or chime in below, and we'll talk about them: "What would it look like, practically speaking, to proclaim the gospel to rivers, redwoods, raccoons and roaches? Is our presence on earth good news for all the creature with which we live?" [p. 23]

bad news

There's a lot of bad news.

This morning our local paper reported that the police stopped a man from jumping off of the Mississippi River bridge yesterday afternoon. That news comes on the heels of a report from the weekend revealing that the suicide rate here in Adams County is 36% higher than the national average and 25% higher than the state average--15 in 100,000 deaths compared to 11 in 100,000 and 12 in 100,000, respectively. The newspaper named three factors in particular that fuel this situation: poverty, drugs, and lack of education.

Of course the well-educated, upper or middle class individual who's not dogged by substance abuse will take his life too. The tragic news about Matthew Warren last week is evidence enough of that.

And the other headlines today, obviously, are about the explosions in Boston yesterday. At this point, 3 people have died and scores have been injured and hospitalized. Someone poured out their malice and spite in one tremendous act of violence on people he probably didn't know, just lashing out at the world, at whomever he could reach.

What do you say in the face of these things?

What do you say to depression and despair, addiction and poverty, suicide and the survivors?
What do you say to rage and violence, terror and murder--and the survivors?

And not only in Natchez, in Boston, in the United States.
What do you say to earthquakes in Iran and Pakistan? Or the bombings in Iraq on Monday, or the on-going violence in Syria, where a million people (500,000 children) have been displaced by the carnage?

There's bad news, horrific, heart-breaking news, coming from all over the world. Every day. Constantly. What can you say to all of this?

You want to look for solutions--counseling and medication for depression, education and aid for those in need of them, negotiations and peace after years of conflict. And sometimes 'solutions' really can solve things, though often they cannot.
You want to offer comfort and sympathy to those left behind, those wracked with grief and questions, and those still in the middle of it all, still unsure, still hurting, still in danger. And sometimes a person can take comfort from our gestures and considerations, but often they cannot.

We should work towards 'solutions' and strive to offer consolation to people who are suffering, but that's not all we can do--not even the best thing we can do.

We should pray, "come, Lord Jesus!"

Because that's when the healing comes. In Christ, our work here and now is not in vain, but the lives that are broken and bruised and torn that we work to treat now, then these lives will be made new, made whole. The fires of conflict and unrest are going to be dowsed with the waters from the spring of life. The forces of evil that infect our world today will be crushed beneath the throne of God that comes down from heaven when God comes to dwell with his people and wipe away their tears, when death and mourning and crying and pain will be no more.
There's a day coming (and I really believe this) when all things will be made new, when all the bad news will be no more--it'll be replaced with good news. We work against the bad, work towards the good now, but only God can complete that work.

So please, God. Come, Lord Jesus.