Is He safe?

That CS Lewis quote has been circling my brain the past few days in the wake of the tragedy in Sandy Creek.

You know, the one from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, where Susan asks the Beavers about Aslan ... "Is he safe?"  ... and their response ... “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” 

Somehow, in my midst of wishing for a safe place in the midst of all of this heartache, I find myself thankful that our God is good.

I've read the tweets, the media stories, the banter on gun control and mental illness, taking God out of schools and bring guns into schools.  I've looked at the sweet faces of those babies who are gone.  I've read with goose bumps, the accounts of the heroic measures teachers took to protect those children.  And I sat, for an hour, this morning, as my coworkers and I tried to put into play a plan that would protect "our kids" ... if it was us.

And I don't have any answers.  Except, I know that my God was there.  He didn't look away.  He was there, just as He is right now with the broken hearts of those parents who will never hold their children again.  And He weeps with them.  It's inconceivable to our finite, human mind how a good and loving God who is capable of stopping evil has chosen to give us the freedom to choose.  We live in a world, wrecked by sin.  It's not mental illness or gun control that failed us last week.  It was, simpy, the fall ... that allowed sin to enter and inhabit our world.  And, this time of year, more than any other, we should be reminded of that God who came near, came and lived alongst us, God incarnate, who now lives IN us ... He is here. 

And where is God in the midst of that, has been the question I've heard.  Well, right there in the thick of it, mourning, weeping, right alongside those who weep.  His heart longing, right with us, for His Kingdom to come.  He has the ability, however, to do something in this tragedy, that we do not.  He has the uncanny ability to take that which was intended for harm, and to redeem it.  Redeem.  Random.   Rescue.  Save.  Deliver.

What sin has warped.  What the enemy has destroyed.  God, in His goodness, mercy, and love can scoop into His hands and work, breathing new life, and redeem.

We will mourn with those who mourn.  And God, may we love more deeply, as we are reminded of the number of our days.  I pray we will stop casting blame and looking for political answers to questions of eternal significance.  And, that in the end, as with Lucy and Edmund, we will find in this life, a glimpse of the One with whom we will spend eternity.

In The Voyage of the Dawntreader, we hear Lucy and Edmund talking to Aslan -
“It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"
"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.
"Are -are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.
"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” 

So, may we learn another name.  Immanuel.  God with us.  And by knowing Him by that name, may we know Him even better on the other side.