Y Highway usually feels like a long front porch.
The pavement has its familiar scars at the shoulder. A line of tired mailboxes stands watch, numbers fading in the weather. Up ahead, the road hooks through a bend where you lift your foot because deer slip out of that hollow. Folks wave even when they do not know each other’s middle names. The woods and the lake make us feel like an island out here, cedar and oak hemming in our little world.
Last night that island became a perimeter.
A patrol car sat across the blacktop with its lights throwing blue across tree trunks and fence wire. The closure was firm. You did not talk your way past it. Somewhere up the hill from the holler I live in, my neighbor, Richard Bird, had ditched his truck at his place and vanished into the timber. Law enforcement poured in. A helicopter worked the ridgeline. Drones joined the search. Flashlights stitched the brush. Radios crackled in the dark.
I ended up stuck on Highway 248 outside Reeds Spring for close to an hour, boxed in with brake lights and quiet faces, everyone staring forward like the road might open if we willed it as our engines idled. The night carried that tense, metallic taste you get when something violent is nearby, even if you cannot see it. Sheriff’s cruisers sat across the highway, angled like braces on a broken bone, lights pounding the darkness. Eventually I turned around and used an alternate way home.
Later, the news landed like a cinder block on the kitchen table.
Authorities say the violence began with a traffic stop on Highway 160 and Route HH south of Highlandville. A Christian County deputy, Gabriel Ramirez, 30, was shot and killed. After Bird’s truck was found abandoned, officers searched the woods through the night. A Highway Patrol helicopter reportedly picked up a moving heat signature. Deputies moved in. Bird opened fire again. A second Christian County deputy was killed. Two more deputies were wounded, one from Christian County and one from Webster County, injuries reported as not life-threatening. Bird was shot and killed in the exchange.
Two deputies dead. Two deputies wounded and a community rattled this morning. Two families began the long work of grieving a man who would not be coming home.
I did not know Deputy Ramirez or the second deputy either. Yet I can picture the life behind a badge in a place like ours: the routine traffic stop, but with practiced caution. Our law enforcement live with the awareness that a simple call can turn into a last call. Somewhere a wife woke up to a phone that would not stop ringing and somewhere parents stared at a uniform they never wanted to see folded. For the wounded deputies, there will be another kind of long road: surgeries and perhaps the strange mercy of survival mixed with the weight of memory.
Their lives mattered. Their courage was real. The Lord sees every unseen act of faithful service done in the dark. Stone County and Christian County will feel this for a long time.
Then there is Richard Bird.
Out here, you can live close enough to share the same storms and still remain unknown. I did not know him. Reports describe a troubled past. The woods held him for a while, then the story ended with his death. People will argue about what happened in his mind, what could have been prevented, what should have been done. Those questions have their place and law enforcement will do their work.
God has already told the truth about fear, bloodshed, and the human heart.
News of slaughter reached Jesus too. The people who carried it wanted a reason that would let them sleep at night. He gave them something else. “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” That is mercy spoken with a blade. Death comes without warning and the heart can sit fat and satisfied until the last breath. Tragedy does not solve the riddle for us. It stands in the doorway and demands a response.
The gospel opens with God’s verdict, then offers God’s mercy.
God is holy and sin is real. Wrath is revealed against ungodliness and unrighteousness. Conscience already knows it. We have lived in God’s world with His gifts and treated Him like a stranger. We too often polish our reputations while our hearts stay unwashed.
Yet the same Bible that tells the truth about God’s anger also tells the truth about God’s heart.
Jesus gave us a picture in Luke 18. Two men went to the temple. One stood tall, rehearsing his resume before God. The other stood back, head lowered, beating his chest, getting out only a plea: “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.” Jesus said the broken man went home justified, declared right with God.
God saves broken people.
He saves them that way because salvation rests on a broken Savior. Christ was wounded for our transgressions. The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. God does not ignore evil. God judged it at the cross. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, He was buried, He rose again the third day. The resurrection stands in history like a stone in the road.
So here is the call, as plain as the gravel under your tires.
If you are waiting to arrive at God with clean hands, you will never arrive. Come the way the tax collector came. Come with a true confession. Say it to the Lord: I got it wrong. I have sinned against You. Be merciful to me. Put your weight on Jesus Christ. Trust His blood. Trust His promise. Trust the welcome of a Father who runs toward repentant sons.
Stone County woke up today with fresh grief on our doorstep. Death walked near our homes. Two families will plan funerals. Wounded deputies will heal under fluorescent hospital lights. Our roads will open again, yet something inside our community has shifted.
A roadblock can keep you from getting home for an hour. Sin can keep you from God forever.
Christ stands ready to receive the tired, the guilty, the frightened, the proud who finally drop the act. Broken hearts fit in His hands. Two deputies did not come home, two will carry wounds, and Richard Bird is gone. You are reading these words with time still in your hands. Repent and believe the gospel.
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