After the horrible double shootings recently, I found comfort in the community of my church.

With all the current commentary about the decline in Christian churches, I find no other comfort as healing as this community.

We sorrow, of course, and rage, too, at the continued evil that targets innocent people. Then we find purpose in the story of a man who preached love but was himself targeted and killed. Yet, he overcame.

Indeed, two thousand years later, this man’s followers persist. They tend to refugees and feed the hungry and comfort those who mourn. Some of them are killed, too, but where their message is lived out, people regroup and stubbornly conquer by loving even one’s enemies.