People who build close friendships experience great pain because it’s part of the package of friendship. When you build deep connections with people there is always the potential of being wounded by them, or the loss when they are gone. Every person we build friendships with will suffer loss because we all are destined to die. Physical death causes great pain if there was also great love connected with that relationship. It shows the value we attributed to that life. What’s worse is if the friendship we built over time ends up betraying our trust and then the loss is doubly painful.

As people watch the recent shootings in Texas where 19 young kids and 2 teachers were killed by an 18 year-old boy, it should be a stark reminder of how violence is the outcome of a heart devoid of God. Seeing such sights reminds us of what demons did, and still do, in and through people devoid of the spirit of God. Throughout the gospels Jesus was constantly casting out demons that torment people. These demonic spirits are more active today as we get near to the return of Jesus and the final judgement of Satan and his demons.

Sometimes things in life seem to almost crush our souls, and we struggle to make sense of “Why” things turned out like they did. Often, there is no easy answer.

Today, Lazarus Jensen came into the world, but could not live outside of his mother’s womb. He passed shortly after coming into the world.

Lazarus was born with such a beautiful face it was hard to comprehend how this beautiful child could not survive. His little body was to frail and underdeveloped so he could not breathe on his own.

As I got up this morning, I opened my phone to see a text from Josh saying they had gone to the hospital around 2am and now they were holding Lazarus, but he was passing soon. The text this morning broke my heart. Not only did they lose a son, but Sue and I were losing a new grandson. When people you love are suffering you just want to hold them and make the pain go away, but the most you can hope for is to bring comfort in the midst of their suffering.