As we continue to deal and heal with the
tragic deadly events in the early hours of June 12, in downtown Orlando’s Pulse
night club, is there anything left to say?
Humanly speaking, we’ve just about run out of words, emotions, media
debates and energy. 
However, spiritually
speaking, there is more. I could go on
and on about evil in the world and our role as the community of the church, but
I did that in my message last week.
Others will probably say it with more eloquence and profundity, however,
I am having some additional thoughts in another direction.
It seems to be that the main agenda of
terrorism is to create an atmosphere of fear and anxiety. No single terrorist’s action can defeat a
nation, state, city or town. So, for the
horrific actions perpetrated on innocent human beings to be effective by the terrorist’s
standard, they must ripple out into the psyche of a community.
The psychological term for this kind of
wounding is called anxiety. Anxiety
doesn’t need the application of physical harm on an individual to elicit it’s
horrible ‘dis-ease.’ All anxiety needs is
for our mind to be preoccupied with the fear that some immediate or future events may occur. I suppose terror – the desired
effect which is caused by a terrorist – is a synonym for anxiety. 
When we think about the potential future harmful
possibilities we begin to feel. We feel fear. It becomes a tormenting cycle of thoughts and feelings of anxiety, more thoughts and more anxious feelings. This is debilitating even to the point of crippling catatonia. So, what is our mental response as people of faith, believing the words of Jesus?
In Matthew 6:25, Jesus give us the mental and spiritual antidote to terrorism and its effect on us. Simply put, He says, “we can’t live tomorrow today and we can’t live yesterday tomorrow. What we can do is live today. Don’t surrender your mind and thought-generated feelings to the wrong master. There can be only one – His name is Jesus. Join us Sunday as we explore this idea a bit further.
