How Long?

September 9th, a Christian leader and pastor died by suicide.
September 10th was suicide prevention day.
Yesterday, September 11th, was the anniversary of the most devastating terrorist attack in America.

This week is different. Often with tragedies you see the added cloud of anger, causing some people to shrink back and others to join the shouting masses. But this? The public mourners have arrived. We are grieving. We weep together.

“How long O Lord?…” -Psalm 13:1 ESV

We pray, but our words fail to capture the meaning we feel. We pray for comfort, healing, help, salvation for those unsaved, protection for those weary, afraid, depressed, and in a pain many struggle to understand, but does it not feel unfinished? I reach the end of a prayer and feel like I spoke while out of breath—cutting out phrases and still feeling full to the brim with words to say but struggling to say them. God still hears the words we search for and cannot find.

“...the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” -Romans 8:26

How long will this be allowed? How many people must be taken from us by the consuming darkness of depression, or the horrific violence of terrorism? How many wives left without husbands, children left without parents, parents left without children, sisters left without brothers, friends left without friends, churches found without pastors, homes now feeling emptier than empty, schools with a hush fallen over them, cities with blood on their streets, desperate human voices crying out together, “How long?”

Not long.

“And behold, I am coming soon… Surely I am coming soon.” -Revelation 22:7, 20

So we continue to pray. We weep with those who weep. We seek out and reach out our hands to our struggling brothers and sisters. We don’t ignore the suffering around us, but we live with the hope that makes every suffering grow impossibly dim. All things will be made new, and it will be far more beautiful than the most creative human mind can begin to imagine.

“‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ He then carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, arrayed with God’s glory. Her radiance was like a precious jewel, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal... I did not see a temple in it, because the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, because the glory of God illuminates it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never close by day because it will never be night there. They will bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. Nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those written in the Lamb’s book of life.” -Revelation 21:9-11, 22-27 CSB

After every painful event and sorrowful reflection this week (that I am not even experiencing the full suffering of compared to others), this passage nearly brought me to tears. 
The time is near. Hold onto hope.
Our hope is so stunning and breathtaking that we can survive the pain of now. 
All will be redeemed. Terrorism will be no more, depression will be no more, fear will be no more, and we will worship our Savior for eternity.

“Come, Lord Jesus!” -Revelation 22:20