A Murder and a Hope

A couple days ago, I received a text message from a friend in China about a Chinese man who was murdered at gunpoint on a trip to the States. After taking a look at this article, I realized that this man was a well-known brother in the city I had lived in. This news struck me for two reasons. Although I never met the man himself, I remember meeting his wife and four kids once when they stopped by to pray for the school I was working at out there. Secondly, he was shot near International House of Prayer in Kansas City. I had spent a summer there a few years back and remember walking the same streets where he was killed. 

From the one time I met Laura, his wife, I recall that she was a woman filled with joy and encouragement. She and her husband have made a lasting mark with their love and devotion to the community, and this news has greatly saddened both expats and locals in Northwest China. But what I keep thinking about most is their four young children. As a widowed mother, she will have to attempt to explain the answer to this question: “Why is daddy gone?”

In response to the murder, Laura shares that she is devastated to lose her husband, but she hopes that the 18-year old PCP-laced shooter would “find the love and forgiveness of God that once so transformed my husband.” She also adds, “We all need forgiveness and that’s something I’m praying that my children would understand.” Finally, she shares, “There’s always hope. I know God can bring good out of anything no matter how terrible it is." I know that only a person who is deeply secure in the Father’s love can make such statements. Only a person who has deeply experienced being forgiven can be free to offer forgiveness to the one who murdered her husband. The hope that the world needs lies within her response.

As I reflect on these events, I am reminded that I can never be sure what tomorrow will hold. But for what I am given today, there is reason to be thankful. Even more, Haodong’s loss teaches me that although God’s will and ways often remain a great mystery, every situation in life can be the unfolding of some manifestation of God’s love and goodness. My task is to be keenly aware of these particular manifestations of the Kingdom come, and Laura’s response is such a manifestation. Her words remind me that God is the God of life who is making all things new.