Shock

When Principal James Marsh arrived at Zela Elementary School in rural Summersville on a Monday morning, he had no reason for alarm. Everything looked normal and in working order. He greeted his teachers and stood out front to greet students as they arrived on buses.

When a custodian informed Marsh that he couldn’t unlock one of the dumpsters, he quickly went over to help. After unlocking the combination lock and lifting the metal bar restricting access, Marsh heard deep growling. After a moment, the dumpster lid lifted, and Marsh was staring into the eyes of a black bear. “If he’d have reached his paw out, he could have swiped me,” Marsh said.

In a sequence captured on security footage, the bear quickly bolted from the dumpster and ran off into the nearby wilderness as Marsh too ran in the opposite direction. After a brief moment to collect himself, Marsh was seen laughing. “Did you not hear anything?” he asked the custodian. Nope, he hadn’t seen or heard a thing. It wasn’t until they reviewed several hours of security footage that they uncovered evidence that the bear had previously gorged itself on food inside, then fallen asleep.

When he asked the students to name the bear (in case it ever returned), the students decided on “Jack.” “Because he came out of there like a jack-in-the-box.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Life is filled with surprises and sometimes sudden danger. We are not to worry about the future or live in dread, but put our trust in God. We should live confidently, recognizing that any moment may be our last on earth.

A Franciscan University in Ohio recently posted a series of ads on Facebook to promote some of its online theology programs. But Facebook rejected one of them because it included a representation of the crucifixion. The monitors at Facebook said the reason for their rejection was that they found the depiction of the cross "shocking, sensational, and excessively violent."

The Franciscan University of Steubenville responded with a blog post that no doubt surprised Facebook: they agreed with Facebook's assessment! The Franciscan university posted:

Indeed, the crucifixion of Christ was all of those things. It was the most sensational action in history: man executed his God. It was shocking, yes: God deigned to take on flesh and was 'obedient unto death, even death on a cross' (Philippians 2 v 8). And it was certainly excessively violent: a man scourged to within an inch of his life, nailed naked to a cross and left to die, all the hate of all the sin in the world poured out its wrath upon his humanity.

They went on to say that it wasn't the nails that kept Jesus on the Cross but his love for mankind:

He was God, he could have descended from the cross at any moment. 'No, it was love that kept him there. Love for you and for me, that we might not be eternally condemned for our sins but might have life eternal with him and his Father in heaven.’

An Indian bride called off her own wedding after getting a look at her groom for the first time on their wedding day. At a reception preceding the ceremony, the bride and groom both lifted their veils and saw one another for the first time. But the would-be bride didn’t like what she saw. According to local news reports, the woman complained the man was too dark-skinned and appeared to be too old. After the woman called off the wedding, the families that had arranged the marriage began fighting, stopping only when police were called to the scene.

Nancy Crampton-Brophy, self-published romance novelist, had been married to Daniel Brophy, culinary chef, for more than 25 years. When her husband was killed in a shooting, it shattered their local community. But in a surprising twist, police arrested her for the murder.

The arrest of Nancy Crampton-Brophy for her husband’s murder sparked a renewed scrutiny of her previous works of fiction, many of which had storylines revolving around spousal murder.

One previous essay, published on the blog “See Jane Publish” but since been taken down, was called “How to Murder Your Husband.” And in a different post on the same blog, Crampton-Brophy wrote:

My husband and I are both on our second (and final—trust me!) marriage. We vowed, prior to saying ‘I do,’ that we would not end in divorce. We did not, I should note, rule out a tragic drive-by shooting or a suspicious accident.

Local law enforcement has been especially tight-lipped about the potential motive for the killing, saying they don’t want to jeopardize an ongoing investigation.

“It’s a big shock. It’s a big shock,” Daniel Brophy’s mother, Karen Brophy, said of her daughter-in-law’s arrest. “But we’re not making any statements.”

Potential Preaching Angles: Our thoughts and words are often precursors to action. If we want to live righteously, we must think, speak, and write with righteousness in mind.

Any of us more than 25 years old can probably remember where we were when we first heard of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963. British novelist David Lodge, in the introduction to one of his books, tells where he was--in a theater watching the performance of a satirical revue he had helped write.

In one sketch, a character demonstrated his nonchalance in an interview by holding a transistor radio to his ear. The actor playing the part always tuned into a real broadcast. Suddenly came the announcement the President Kennedy had been shot. The actor quickly switched it off, but it was too late. Reality had interrupted stage comedy.

For many believers, worship, prayer, and Scripture are a nonchalant charade. They don't expect anything significant to happen, but suddenly God's reality breaks through, and they're shocked.

Author Edgar Jackson poignantly describes grief:

Grief is a young widow trying to raise her three children, alone. Grief is the man so filled with shocked uncertainty and confusion that he strikes out at the nearest person. Grief is a mother walking daily to a nearby cemetery to stand quietly and alone a few minutes before going about the tasks of the day. She knows that a part of her is in the cemetery, just as part of her is in her daily work. Grief is silent, knife-like terror and sadness that comes a hundred times a day, when you start to speak to someone who is no longer there. Grief is the emptiness that comes when you eat alone after eating with another for many years. Grief is teaching yourself to go to bed without saying good night to the one who has died. Grief is the helpless wishing that things were different when you know they are not and never will be again. Grief is a whole cluster of adjustments, apprehensions, and uncertainties that strike life in its forward progress and make it difficult to redirect the energies of life.