Broken Hearts in Tennessee

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Inexperienced teenage drivers are known to be prone to distraction and accidents. And five-year old children are known to be careless and clueless when they play near roads and streets.

Those two grim facts of life intersected with awful efficiency on the long gravel driveway to Steven Curtis Chapman’s country home this afternoon.

According to this news report, one of the Chapman’s teenage sons was driving the family’s SUV up the driveway as his little sister Maria–one of three little girls the family has adopted in China in recent years–was playing there. He never saw her. And she is gone.

Here at our house, we stopped and prayed and shook our heads at the immensity of the grief that a fallen world visits upon some of its very best souls. What a horrific blow for a wonderful family to have to absorb. What a cruel weight have laid upon narrow boy-shoulders.

As we prayed, I was reminded of a song Chapman wrote several years ago. He called it “Hold On to Jesus.” The lyric he wrote says:

I have come to this ocean
And the waves of fear are starting to grow
The doubts and questions are rising with the tide
So I’m clinging to the one sure thing I know
I will hold onto the hand of my Savior
And I will hold on with all my might
I will hold loosely to things that are fleeting
And hold on to Jesus
I will hold on to Jesus for life

I’ve tried to hold many treasures
They just keep slipping through my fingers like sand
But there’s one treasure that means more than breath itself
So I’m clinging to it with everything I am
Like a child holding onto a promise
I will cling to His word and believe
As I press on to take hold of that
For which Christ Jesus took hold of me
Hold on for life

Hold on, dear Chapman family. May you find mercy and comfort and solace and hope as you do.