I will fear no evil (Text by Tim)

"...I came naked from my mother's womb, and I will be stripped of everything when I die. The LORD gave me everything I had, and the LORD has taken it away. Praise the name of the LORD!" Job 1:21

Though the hour was late, our younger son, Andrei, was in his apartment working at his table when a bullet blasted through the upper left corner of the window above his bed shortly after midnight Saturday.
A mile away and a short time later, I awoke from a deep sleep in the wee hours of Saturday morning to loud knocking on our front door. Not sure whether I had dreamed it, I waited. Then the sound came again, from the window of a front bedroom. By then Cathy was starting to stir, wondering what was going on. I told her someone was outside knocking. At that moment the unknown fist banged on the bedroom window right next to our heads – a startling and frightening noise that got us up and creeping out our bedroom door.

Clutching the keychain panic button of our alarm system, I peeked around the corner of the entryway and saw through the glass of the door our younger son, Andrei, standing with a policeman on the front porch. A new fear: Andrei was under arrest!

The policeman quickly assured us, “He’s OK; he hasn’t done anything wrong.” Then the two of them told us what had happened. Someone fired a random gunshot through the window of Andrei’s nearby apartment. When he stepped outside to call 911, the police – who already were there investigating a report of gunfire – saw him and got the story. He asked for a ride to our house, where he spent the rest of the night.

The next day, Andrei and I went to his apartment to get some of his stuff. We knew he had spent his last night there.

Seeing the bullet hole in the glass a few feet above his bed and the second hole in his bathroom wall slammed home the terrifying reality of the incident. The bullet had passed through the doorway into the bathroom and gouged the wall. At the time of the gunshot, Andrei was at his work table a few feet away in the efficiency apartment. If he had been in bed, it would have whizzed right over him. If he had been going into the bathroom, it would have cut him down.

Sunday morning in church, we sang a popular praise chorus titled Blessed Be Your Name. Hearing it, I marveled again that Job could accept with equanimity the loss of everything he had.

I thanked God with everything I had that He did not take away Andrei, but spared him. Yet I also realized that if the ending had been different, I still would have only one place to turn. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Please join us in prayers of thanks for God’s mercy and in prayers for our safety. Sometimes it’s a scary world.