The attacks on Israel have made many of us ask the question, “What if this happened in America? What if suddenly, a surprise terrorist attack took place against the civilian population releasing terror in our cities? Of late, our porous borders have allowed people to enter our nation, not the ones seeking a better life, but those using our lack of wisdom to position themselves in our nation for nefarious reasons.

Imagine if the following events unfolded in this sequence. 

Terrorists entered our nation covertly.

They become embedded in our cities.

They waited, in some cases, for years.

At a precise moment, an attack order is issued.

As the attacks begin, fear grips the entire nation.

Terrorists are going door-by-door and killing families.

The President employs The Emergency Powers Act.

Marital Law is declared suspending civil law.

Our nation is now under siege.

All businesses are closed.

Domestic communication is taken over.

All non-military travel is suspended.

We are told to shelter in place.

We are alone as terror roams our streets.

If you think this is not possible you have not paid enough attention to the condition of our nation and the world. In the middle of this real possibility stands the Church. What would our faith look like if such a series of events occurred? 

We can prepare our families for desperate times by gathering food, and water, and providing shelter and security. Still, when real terror knocks down our door to inflict death and mayhem everything changes. We become vulnerable experiencing the very terror that a terrorist hopes to inflict. All the pre-attack bravado goes out the window. In those moments, our faith takes on a different look than someone sitting peacefully in a comfortable chair drinking coffee and reading the Bible for their morning devotions. It is a raw kind of faith not experienced in times of peace.

A post like this one will upset some who have been told by naïve leaders not to consider such a possibility, even mocking the mention of these things defining them as negative thinking, conspiratorial, or even faithless. If that is your case, you might want to consider following a more realistic kind of leader.

In the coming days, it would be wise to take time to reaffirm and recalibrate our faith in God. No matter how well-prepared we think we are in times of peace, when raw forms of evil come and crash through our front door only the most simple expression of faith will survive, not an expression of faith that has never entertained the possibility that bad things do happen to good people.