April 20, 2017
Lenten Devotions – Columbine

“What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Romans 6:1-5

On this day, April 20, 1999, two high school students (their names will not be mentioned in my post) began shooting up their school, Columbine High School. They did not fire randomly. In their desire to spread evil and hate, they chose athletes, minorities and Christians as their enemies.

“Do you believe in God?” they asked Cassie Bernall. They knew full well she did. The girl who had once indulged in the occult (as the killers now did) had moved into a realm of loving Christ. She became a church-goer and a worker among those who needed Christ. Often she brought her Bible to school. She was reading it in the library when the killer pointed his gun at her. Did she believe in God? “Yes, I believe in God,” she replied. “Why?” asked the boy in the dark trench coat. Without waiting for an answer, he pulled the trigger. “My God, my granddaughter was a martyr,” said Cassie’s grandma when she heard the report.
And not the only one, either. Rachel Scott, a spiritually-minded seventeen-year-old whose ambition was to become a missionary to Africa, died, too. So did John Tomlin, a sixteen-year-old who had recently gone to Mexico to help with a church project for the poor.
The Sunday before her death, Cassie wrote these words after church:

Now I have given up on everything else I have found it to be the only way
To really know Christ and to experience
The mighty power that brought Him back to life again, and to find
Out what it means to suffer and to
Die with him.
So, whatever it takes I will be one who lives in the fresh
Newness of life of those who are
Alive from the dead. (christianity.com website, Columbine Killers Targeted Christians, Too, Dan Graves, MSL)

What do we name these kinds of events? Are they tragic circumstances? Are they evil incarnate? Are these children the products of abusive, violence encouraged, game induced childhoods? Or, can we just say “Bad things happen to good and bad people”? We have no idea why people do horrendous things, why people kill in the name of evil, or why people have a death wish and want to share that wish with others. We will never completely eradicate evil until Christ’s reign is complete. Until then we fight evil every chance we get with the power of the Holy Spirit, and the Church Universal.

Pastor Dave