“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
We mourned to you, and you did not lament.” MT 11:17

Jesus spoke these words about a generation that had become numb. Imagine a hungry lion yawning before a freshly killed chunk of meat; or a panda becoming disinterested in bamboo. These portraits are unnatural, aberrant. Only a tamed, pathetic people could become so plasticized, soulless. I watched a clip in horror one day of a scene from a park in Connecticut where scores of people, men and women, old and young, rich and ragged, lay motionless on the ground and on benches. Police and medics responding to this apocalyptic event shook and rolled the lifeless in an attempt to revive these who had been drugged into oblivion by laced opioids. These are just a few pictures of what we are shockingly becoming. Jesus had warned us it would happen:

“And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold…” Matt 24:12

So how do we vaccinate our hearts against this petrifying pandemic? In a day when social media clutters our minds with exhaustive images and posts of painful and horrendous tales, how do we keep and insulate our spirits from contamination and Novocaine jabs? How do we stay tender, and cultivate compassion? How do we turn tragedy and travesty into trajectory and triumph?

Acts 8:1-8 gives us a model response. Stephen had been stoned to death, and violent persecution was unleashed against the fledgeling church in Jerusalem. Saul was making havoc of the church, dragging men and women out of their homes and committing them to prison. When this flute began to play, the believers danced. Identifying with unflappable Stephen, throwing caution to the wind, devout men dove into the fray. Removing each guilty rock, lifting his bloody and broken body upon their strained and stained shoulders, they carried this firebrand to his tomb. We need this personal touch in an increasingly impersonal generation. Feeling begins with touching, and I don’t mean the keys of your computer. We must not be hoodwinked by Satan’s DEVICES. Interacting with people—godly, burning people, is like water on my clay-heart spinning on the wheel of our fast and furious generation. Water, like the Word splashing over me, keeps me able to be shaped and formed in His hand, in which I am kept forever warm.

Burial is digging, and dirging. And so these disciples “made great lamentation over him.” Jesus said if you want to be blessed, you must learn how to mourn. It’s probably been a while since you heard a sermon about this, but His mercies are fresh not just at the start every day but every mourning too. Mourning is a part of healing. Mourning is reflection, which inspires and invokes the perspective of Eternity. President Trump rightly walked the beaches once soaked with the blood of our nation’s young soldiers in commemorating D-Day’s 75th anniversary earlier this month. As Queen Elizabeth so aptly spoke, “the heroism, courage, and sacrifice of those who lost their lives will never be forgotten.” If we are to be a people who will not relent, we must take the time to greatly lament. The stories of those who have gone before are written on the recesses of our hearts with the pens of remembrance and honor.

Undeterred, the believers who had been bloodied and burdened, now badgered, scattered like pregnant seedlings into the soil of unreached towns and villages, sprouting flowers of healing and joy wherever they went. As the limb-littered shorelines of Normandy and Omaha brought liberty songs in their wake, so too these soldiers of the cross brought freedom’s praise to Judea and Samaria. May we resolutely commemorate and emulate all those who have paid a price to make Him known. In the spirit of D-Day celebrations, may we never, ever, forget.