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Like everyone else yesterday morning I woke to a news feed following an unfolding situation in Fredericton in which an active shooter was as not yet apprehended and a number of people were dead. My first thought was “not again,” as it has been just over four years since a similar incident happened in Moncton where three RCMP officers lost their lives and two others were injured. Later, as we prayed together as a family for the situation, I pondered a few more realities.

First, although I pastor in Charlottetown, PEI, I know a number of churches in the Fredericton area that are ministering the gospel and will be on the ground serving their communities in the immediate and ongoing aftermath. Coming on the heels of another spring of severe flooding, these communities are hurting badly and need our collective prayers and support.

Second, despite the tourism marketing campaigns, the Maritimes, while beautiful in so many ways, feels the effects of sin like the rest of our fallen world. Images of quaint fishing villages create an idyllic façade that thinly covers a much darker reality. As Tolkien reminded us in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, if evil exists anywhere it has the potential to exist everywhere, even in a place known by adjectives such as “peaceful,” “quiet,” and “gentle.” Once again, these stereotypes have been removed briefly and we need real responses to harsh realities. Evil is here, not just in the “big cities” across Canada, and only the gospel can address that.

Lastly then, as I write this morning, we need to get beyond platitudes and the usual post-tragedy debates and continue to do the hard gospel work that is being done in Fredericton and will continue to be done as this story unfolds. We must acknowledge the reality that our problem is sin, and that sin is in all of us. It is not “out there,” whether that be outside our region or outside of our inner being.

We must gratefully accept the only solution, which is that provided by our Creator Himself, Jesus Christ the Righteous who became one of us so that He could stand in front of the full darkness of sin and bear its penalty, dying for sinners such as us and rising again from the grave in triumph. He is our only hope, and only by submitting to Him and trusting Him alone can we get beyond what happened yesterday and one day see the eradication of all such acts.

Please pray for Fredericton, for all those doing gospel work there and for all who God may be drawing to Himself through this. There are hard questions being asked and we need good Biblical answers in response. May we not be lulled back to comfortability so quickly after incidents such as these, but may we continue to press ahead with proclaiming the only real solution to the real issue- Jesus, the great Saviour for great sinners.

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