Week 49 --- Revelation 19:6-8

Then I heard again what sounded like the shout of a vast crowd or the roar of mighty ocean waves or the crash of loud thunder:

“Praise the Lord!
For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.
Let us be glad and rejoice,
and let us give honor to him.
For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb,
and his bride has prepared herself.
She has been given the finest of pure white linen to wear.”

I'm still in the process of breaking down my holiday's spiritual learnings from the past month. I think that the Hallelujah chorus may have been one of the cooler things that I noticed this Christmas. One Sunday at work, over the shoppers, the soundtrack, the hustle bustle I heard the Hallelujah chorus being sung somewhere in the mall. I was so struck by how strong and clear it was over the rest of the craziness. So I did a little reading....

Handel, the composer of the Hallelujah Chorus was a loner. He was a man that stuck to himself and didn't have a lot of friends or family. He wrote lots of musical pieces in his life, but it seems to me that this is probably the most noteworthy. I read a worthy source that said "There is another story told about this chorus that Handel's assistant walked in to Handel's room after shouting to him for several minutes with no response. The assistant reportedly found Handel in tears, and when asked what was wrong, Handel held up the score to this movement and said, "I thought I saw the face of God." I bet he really did. If the way my heart feels when I hear it is any indication of the power of that music, I really think he did.

Come to find out....

Before you watch this video, you need to scroll down to the very very bottom of the page and pause the blog music. I almost insist you watch this :)

This was happening in the malls that day....

I don't talk about the Westroad's shooting very often, but seeing this video in that place makes me think of so many things.

The day that sticks out in my mind is the day before the whole shooting, I think that would have been December 4th. I went to work like any other day, only eeeeeeverything ticked me off. No one took the trash out the night before, people showing up late for work, by noon I was at my absolute max for tolerating anything. And these weren't even big things...just where I was at that day. So I end up getting the heck out of there for my lunch break and I just drove til I ended up at a Sonic somewhere. I pulled out my little green purse Bible and just started looking for anything. My friend Amy had been so blessed by the words in scripture that talk about the armor of God, and had been mentioning it often at that point in the year, so I turned there and started reading that in Ephesians 6. Knowing now what was coming up the next day makes this scripture so so precious to me now.

¹⁰ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. ¹¹ Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. ¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. ¹³ Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. ¹⁴ Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, ¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. ¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

  So I go back to work, and finish my day no problem. I come in to work the next day and it is oddly normal compared to how stressed I was the day before. I go through the morning and am on my lunch break talking to my mom on the phone in my office. One of the girls that works for me came running back saying they heard gunshots and people were running. (How much do you not want to be talking to your kid on the phone to overhear this conversation? Ugg...Laurie Sue is a tough cookie) So I go up to the front of my store, for sure people are in a panic and running and no one knows what's going on. I step out into the mall to see if I can see anything and have no idea what is really happening. So I lock my store. I lower the gate and decide this is our best defense. At this point I don't know if it's just a fight or a rumor or even something to be worried about.

This whole time I have about 12 women in my store, and they are not happy that I have now locked them in. They are all on their little cell phones, informing me that people at Younkers are being allowed to leave and I should just let them out. My phone has been ringing this whole time with people calling and asking what's going on, as well as a local tv station that would like to do a "quick interview" ....Are you kidding me?!

One of the phone calls from the tv station was to tell me there's a "gunman roaming the mall in camouflage carrying a shotgun...how do you feel about that?" The women in the store are getting calls from people at home that are watching tv and are hearing the news reporting that there are 60 people dead in the mall.

I don't know what to do.

So I text a half a dozen people to start praying and I go back out and move everyone to the back of the store. I seat everyone in a back hallway and tell them we're not leaving until we know what's going on. They continue to get calls from people who are telling them what they're seeing on tv, and I think I walked away from this whole experience hating the media more than ever. Once everyone is behind the wall at the back of the store, I go back to my office and shut the door. I had been studying with some friends about believing God and there was a statement we said at the beginning of every meeting. So I put one hand on my heart and the other one up in the air and I said this 5 statement pledge:

1. God, You are who You say you are
2. God, You can do what You say You can do
3. God, I am who You say I am
4. God, I can do all things through You
5. Your WORD is alive and living in Me

I'm believing God. (Those who did this study with me are totally doing the actions now right?) :)

It's more than a belief in God. I believe Him. You have to be believing Him to do what He says he can do. It's an active thing that you do. And sometimes that means believing he will protect you and give you the words to say to scared people in a crazy situation. So with my reassurance that God will work through me, and with my feet fitted with the readiness of peace I went back out and waited.

I would wear the keys to my store on a lanyard that hung around my neck, and that day was no different. I was standing behind the wall when men started shouting through the gate to open the door. Keep in mind that we had no idea what was happening, and we had been told gunman were roaming the mall, so when someone shouts to open the gate I was probably the most scared I have ever been in my entire life. To have keys hanging around your neck that separate people that have guns, from people that don't have guns is a feeling I wouldn't wish on anyone. The thoughts going through my head were how mad a gunman would be if you didn't do what they said, and how long it would take them to get through a chain metal gate --- and what on earth that looks like once both of those things have happened. Mercy.

But I look around the wall and I see police. Hallelujah. I feel less in charge at this point. Please someone just tell me what to do. They are wanting to move us to another location so we all go up and get ready to leave. One woman had a baby with her, which in therapy after this whole ordeal ended up being one of the more upsetting things to me. A baby should never ever be in a place like this at this point. The police tell us we're going to have to run with them. I yell at another woman to help the mother with her stroller (odd huh? couldn't have just left the stroller) and I throw a blanket over the woman's baby that she's carrying. I ran next to this mother with my arm around her covering that babies head the whole time. I kind of wonder where they're at now, the baby's name was Sebastian. We run through the Westroads atrium (the very same one from the video above, that I can just hardly wait to talk to you about) where there are police with guns drawn and aimed about every 5 feet. 

They put us all in the JCPenney department store and we waited there until they told us we could leave. God bless the hide-a-key on my car, cause I ran out of that place with just my cell phone in my hand, and wouldn't have been able to get home otherwise. 

I don't know if I think about the shooting everyday, but maybe every other day. It's not something that upsets me anymore, I think a lot about how I have a God that provides and protects and how close I felt to Him in the days after. I am 100% a more sensitive person to public safety and policies and things we can do to make things like that not happen, or if they do, being ready and having a plan. But I'm sure that's normal...

But the video above --- are you ready for this --- 3 years later, a song that acknowledges God as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords is being sung in a place where violence is my strongest memory. He is so big and so sovereign and He's over all of this. 

This is God's redemption friends. 

He can take a situation that leaves us scarred and scared and reassure us that He's not done yet. Some people talk about difficult times and say that we had to go through that to learn a lesson or find God in a new way. Friends, God would never justify a shooting like that to teach me a lesson, but he will redeem it. He'll take something like that and use it to show his glory. 

That video was emailed to me a few days after Christmas and it may have been the best present I got this year. (Which is really really saying a lot, because I received a Keurig coffee maker too, and it is one of my new most favorite things) 

I hit play on that video and the tears just streamed down my face. 

The kingdom of this world, is becoming the kingdom of our Lord.

It is, isn't it!? 

King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And he shall reign forever and ever....

I am all in my friends. We are totally on the winning team here. My verse for the week above is the scripture that the Hallelujah chorus is based on, and I think it is what has blessed me most this holiday season. "Let us be glad and rejoice, and let us give honor to him." I hope you had a good Christmas and I hope you saw God in new and big ways this year. I think he may have put 2500 people in a shopping mall singing a song just for me. :)