Immeasurable…

Google defines “Immeasurable” as too large, extensive, or extreme to measure; immense, measureless, vast, boundless, infinite..

This is what I imagine 20 sets of grieving parents and the families of 7 murdered adults are feeling tonight. Immeasurable loss. Immeasurable pain. Immeasurable confusion. Immeasurable anger. Immeasurable.

There’s something that happens to you when you become a parent. It’s as if everything you previously knew as truth becomes an afterthought. As if someone magically lifts the veil and real life, real love finally arrives and is lying in your arms. Perfect, new, innocent, precious. Immeasurable. I remember when I first laid eyes on my Milly. I remember hearing her as she struggled to breathe, struggled to cry… My labor left me physically riddled, battered, medically unstable and in need of care – but in that moment I knew whatever the cost, Milly had to be OK. The best description of parenthood I’ve ever heard is that your heart walks around outside of your body. I knew in that moment – my heart was now vulnerable and wide open.

Your life’s sole purpose then becomes keeping your heart safe.

Tonight, I grieve for these parents. Their hearts, strewn throughout classrooms, hallways, lunchrooms. Little bodies still lying where they drew their untimely last breath. Parents who will never again smell their little girl’s hair or feel the warmth of their baby boy’s hugs. I grieve as I know they would take the place of their babies, in the beat of a heart, in the blink of an eye. My mind cannot fathom the depths of their loss, their sorrow, their hurt…

Immeasurable.

There’s a deep contrast of dark and light; a deep, vast contrast. Immeasurable darkness, immeasurable evil against the backdrop of anticipation and celebration as the greatest light and greatest hope the world has ever known comes… Emmanuel.

I can’t make sense of it. I don’t have words. I don’t pretend to understand, and I certainly don’t think this is something God planned or intended for his creation. Evil is real, and it’s powerful… However, so is goodness, love and light. As deep as our sorrow runs, so runs the love of Christ. As much as our hearts cry and grieve, his grace and mercy is extended. So tonight, as immeasurable loss and hurt courses deep through our veins, so does immeasurable hope and mercy.

May we each do our part to be joy, hope and goodness.