September 10, 2025

ONLY ONE CAN FILL THE VOID

We were flying back into Phoenix when I looked at the newsfeeds on my phone.  President Trump had announced that Charlie Kirk had died of a gunshot wound in Utah.  He was speaking the truth of God at Utah Valley University, as he always did, wherever he spoke.  He had been alive an hour before while I waited for my flight.  The world had changed in an hour. 

This morning, after listening to a news brief about the incident and the capture of the suspected assassin, I turned to Acts to pick up where I left off in the story of Stephen’s murder by those who were enraged by his speaking of the truth, which included their murder of Jesus.  Stephen also prayed, as Jesus did, for God to forgive his murderers.

Charlie is a modern martyr in the United States of America.  The world in my lifetime comes to the edge of all that God’s truth depicts of life in America and the world at the hands of a being who wants to destroy all that is good, all that God has made.  That GOOD has made.  While we are on the brink of the darkest span of earth’s existence, we know where our salvation comes from.  The truth cannot be stopped.  God cannot be stopped.  Everything that exists, exists because of God.

John 1:3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

I am sad.  Sad for the world.  Sad for the cargo of the world, people jammed inside their containers of illusory safety, thinking they are protected by walls that will trap them for eternity at the bottom of the sea.  Charlie was an evangelist, a promoter of conversational engagement for the sake of peace, for the sake of Jesus and for the sake of saving lives.  So much more death and destruction are coming, but the good news is we can be caught in Jesus’ net, as Charlie was.  He is in the presence of the King and mighty Lord of all Creation.  We are suffering his loss and as Kash Patel said this morning to his friend – we will see you again Charlie. 

We pray for Charlie’s family, for ourselves and for humanity.  God, use this tragedy to make our path straight and our purpose even more clear as we continue to walk a step at a time, a day at a time toward you.  These days of suffering are not without reason. Your eternal plan is before us, help us to trust, to believe, to have a heart like yours and like Charlie’s.

Psalm 139

7Where can I go from your Spirit?    Where can I flee from your presence?⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,    if I settle on the far side of the sea,¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,    your right hand will hold me fast.¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me    and the light become night around me,”¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;    the night will shine like the day,    for darkness is as light to you.