Remembering September 10
“Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy” (Ps. 126:5).
9/10
Sunlight drifted over the parking lot where we’d stopped to eat lunch. The lot was mostly empty, except for two or three other cars with people sitting in the driver’s seats. Soon a Christian school bus swooped up, and little girls in pleated skirts spilled out and hopped into the waiting vehicles.
I began balling up our trash and shoving it into the now-empty Chick-fil-A bag. It was around 2:30 or 2:45 in the afternoon. We’d loaded up the car this morning and driven to the Tongue Tie Clinic of Atlanta for our newborn’s third and final in-person appointment. Now my husband pulled out his phone to type in our home address. I grabbed Jane Austen’s Emma out of my purse—our read-aloud for the drive home.
“Oh, love,” said my husband in a shocked voice.
He was staring at his phone screen. My heart dropped. I thought something awful must have happened to a family member.
“Charlie Kirk was just shot dead.”
“What?”
There was a stunned silence. I began to weep into the palm of my hand.
My husband pulled up X.com and saw that they’d taken Charlie Kirk to the hospital. Then came the drive home, both of us praying earnestly in our heads like so many millions, until President Trump’s X post lay open on my phone and I was reading aloud—hardly believing my own voice—that “the Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk” really was dead.
10/10
It’s a month today since the assassination, and now that the first painful stages of grief have passed, I wanted to reflect on the event in writing—just a few thoughts to honor Charlie and the God who redeemed him.
Like so many Americans, I’ve felt the spiritual revival sweeping over this nation. You can experience it in real time on X.com—men asking how to be saved and pledging to attend church for Charlie’s sake, a worldly podcaster searching for salvation. You could hear it at Charlie’s memorial service, where speakers from Vice President Vance to Tucker Carlson to Don, Jr. preached Christ and Him crucified while more than 100 million people watched.
That revival has swept over my own soul, too. I’ve felt more convicted of sin. And I’ve found myself wanting to know Christ more.
In many ways, Charlie Kirk resembled his Lord. Charlie loved people and wanted to help them. He spoke to large crowds. He preached the Gospel to them. His enemies reviled him for telling the truth, twisted his words to defame him. And as Tucker Carlson pointed out, eventually someone—perhaps multiple someones, since the FBI narrative makes no sense—tried to silence Charlie in death, just as the first-century Jews did to Jesus. The point is, Charlie Kirk imitated Christ. And if a mere man’s goodness is so infectious, how much lovelier must the Son of God be?
By contrast, evil tastes even more bitter than it did before. Watching old videos of Charlie, I find my eyes straying to his neck, remembering what that bullet did to it. The memory makes me angry. A wound to the neck feels like shame, and I don’t want a good man to die in shame. Evidently, the demons who plotted Charlie Kirk’s death thought they could humiliate him by profaning his body—ripping him apart, dousing him in his own blood.
They failed, of course. Death has no sting for Charlie because the shame of Christ’s death wipes away the shame of his (1 Cor. 15:55-57). Still, I suppose I’m having to confront, head on, just how much the powers of darkness hate Christ and His followers—just how much they relish defacing the image of God.
But they’re losing. I think we can all feel that. In the most beautiful plot twist of my lifetime, God transformed the evil of Charlie’s murder into good (Gen 50:20): the first blossoming of Christian Nationalism in modern America, as a political organization partnered with our government to display Christ’s glory before 100 million people. At last, this nation’s materialism appears to be heaving up like a dying thing, splitting at the seams.
And the resolve of the Church is growing. I’ve enjoyed a heightened sense this month of the unity of Christ’s body—of Christians worshiping Him all over the world, united in our common confession that Jesus is King.
Perhaps I’m not the only one to feel it. Charlie Kirk’s death has proven once again that we live in a spiritual world, with spiritual enemies who’d love to see us die shamefully, with no hope of redemption. But Christ is King, and we have every reason to keep praying that His Kingdom would come in America…