CREEDE HINSHAW: Finding faith in a time of crisis

As I write these words, President Trump is traveling to Las Vegas to speak not only to that city, but to a broken nation.

Whatever words he says they won’t be enough because words can only take us so far. There are no words to address the level of anguish and despair in the wake of the shocking, senseless, pre-meditated massacre by a gunman with weapons apparently modified to make them work like a machine gun.

What I know and have discovered again this week is that if one doesn’t already have a deep repository of faith, it is almost impossible to find an anchor in the moment of crisis.

Jesus told a parable about five bridesmaids whose lamps burned out of oil while they were waiting for a wedding. When the bridegroom finally arrived unexpectedly, the inattentive attendants panicked, searching everywhere for oil to replenish their lamps.

Alas, it was too late. There was no oil to be found at the moment of crisis.

People in the backcountry said the same thing in a little more homespun fashion: When the moment of crisis comes, you’d better be prayed up.

Keep those lamps full of oil; be constant in prayer. It’s hard enough to pray in the face of unmitigated tragedy, but there’s no possibility of praying with conviction or certainty if you never pray until the wolf is at the door.

I sat on my front porch earlier this week in the darkness of Tuesday morning. My wife and I had been on the interstate for 11 hours on Monday, listening on and off to the radio, our hearts utterly broken. We could only take so much of the news before it was completely crushing.

Tuesday morning, beneath my porch light, I opened my Bible to John 1. I hadn’t turned to that particular scripture intending to find comfort there. I was preparing for a Bible study later that morning. But as I read, I found comfort. John 1:4 promised that the darkness would not overcome the light.

I sat in the gloom, barely able to see the trees in my front yard. But across the way sat my neighbor’s house, her porch light gleaming through the inky blackness. And though the dark, literally and figuratively, encompassed 99 percent of my field of vision, it could not extinguish that 1 percent of light.

Suddenly, I felt part of my burden lift. I don’t mean that I’m now walking around whistling. But the power of sacred scripture provided comfort. Darkness cannot overcome the light. From the earliest days of the church, Christians have faced martyrdom singing.

They were prepared, prayed up, unperturbed. They had deep, abiding peace when it was most needed.

I also don’t mean to imply that followers of Jesus are the only people who can find comfort in sacred scripture, song and prayer. Nor do I mean that faith protects from all despair. But for a person’s faith to make a difference – whatever the religious background – the deeper the background and the more faithful the disciple, the greater the possibility of a victorious life in the face of the worst tragedies.

Contact columnist Creede Hinshaw, a retired Methodist minister, at [email protected].