Scripture and the death of an officer in the Line of Duty

There has been a campaign going on to achieve the goal of keeping the number of officers killed in the line of duty under one hundred in a year.  We made it to October.  Arthur Lopez, a police officer on Long Island, was killed in a traffic stop on Tuesday, the 100th officer to die in the line this year according to an online law enforcement website.

**Need to correct something.  In the emotion of reading, I made a mistake.  The 100th officer to die in the line of duty occurred two days after Officer Lopez was shot.  It was an officer killed in a car crash in Prince George's County.  I apologize and can only say that I wasn't reading as clearly as I should have.**

I don't know what to say about that.  I am a chaplain for the police department of the city where my church is located.  I know that the loss of their first officer in the line of duty was part of the background that has led to this part of my ministry.  And I do not know how devastating it would be if this were one of ours.

What tends to push me to blog is when things coincide in ways that I cannot let stand still.

The death of Officer Lopez, finding out he was the one hundredth officer to fall, came right on the heels of my sermon prep for Sunday.

My text is 1 Samuel 2.  Plot synopsis: Elkanah has two wives, Penninah and Hannah.  Penninah bore him children, Hannah not.  He loved Hannah more, like she was a trophy wife.  She prayed and was given the gift of a child, called Samuel, whom she gave to the Lord.  The text for Sunday is her prayer of thanksgiving to God.  And I am sitting here trying to figure out how her prayer, so confident and so explicit of the powers of God, applies to our lives today.

Then, dodging the work and going to my emails, I came across the story on Officer Lopez.  Going back to the text, 1 Samuel 2:6, "the Lord kills and brings to life..."  Hannah prays this triumphantly to the power of God.  Now I am looking at the obit of a 29 year old cop and considering the same words and where God is in that officer's death.

Right now, it is just a raw struggle to pray about.  I will put down more when the Lord gives me something more.