Posted July 13, 2026
Lindsey Graham, a longtime Republican senator from South Carolina, has died, his office said early Sunday morning. He was seventy-one.
Sen. Graham was a former presidential candidate and a strong advocate for the war with Iran. He had been in Ukraine on Friday to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky. He died after a tear in his aorta, according to a preliminary medical examiner’s finding.
Mr. Graham was first elected to the Senate in 2002. He was a strong supporter of Israel; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country had no better friend than the senator. He chaired the Senate Budget Committee and was a regular presence in the media. In fact, he had been scheduled to appear Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.
In other news, legendary New Zealand actor Sam Neill, best known for his Jurassic Park roles, died Monday in Sydney, Australia, at the age of seventy-eight. “The loss was sudden and unexpected,” his family said. Gunfire at a street festival Saturday night in Toronto killed at least two people and injured at least four others. And a huge fire engulfed a bar in Bangkok, Thailand, late on Sunday, killing at least twenty-seven and leaving twenty-two critically injured.
If you’re like me, you were hoping for a more hopeful word to start your week. I had no intention of writing about sudden deaths this morning and wish the news had prompted a more positive direction.
However, from a personal perspective, I can pivot quickly from these headlines since none of them directly affects me. I don’t live in South Carolina, Toronto, or Thailand, and I did not know personally any of the people in these stories.
This is the way many of us navigate the news every day. When something good happens, we embrace it. When something bad happens, we try to ignore it.
I’m not sure how it could be otherwise. We all have what my seminary faculty colleague Oscar Thompson called “concentric circles of concern” radiating from ourselves to family, relatives, friends, neighbors and associates, acquaintances, and those unknown to us. We process the urgency of news and events accordingly. If what happens in Thailand affected us as personally as what happens in our immediate family, we’d soon be overwhelmed.
Of course, God is not limited as we are. Because he is not bound by time, knowledge, or love, he has all of eternity to hear your next prayer and to engage in your life this very moment.
Jesus is praying for each of us as if there were only one of us (cf. Romans 8:34). He is with us and in us every moment of every day (Matthew 28:20; 1 Corinthians 3:16). Because we are in his hand, nothing can happen to us that does not happen to him (John 10:29). He weeps as we weep (John 11:35) and walks with us through the floods, fires, and fears of life (Isaiah 43:2–3; Psalm 23:4).
Here’s the problem: I want to process God’s presence in my life in the same way I process the news on my computer screen. This is not just a theological error—it is the catalyst for every spiritual failure in my life.
When I need his help, I am grateful that God is as close as my next prayer. When I am grieving, it is wonderful to know that he shares my pain. When I experience joy, I am thankful that he is the giver of “every perfect gift” (James 1:17).
But when I want to do something I know he does not want me to do, or not do something I know he wants me to do, his presence in my life is a problem.
Our Father knows when a sparrow falls to the ground (Matthew 10:29). Sin grieves and stifles his indwelling Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30; 1 Thessalonians 5:19). But we can ignore these facts when we wish. If the temptation we are considering does not seem to lead to tangible or public consequences, we can simply confess it later and be forgiven, or so we think.
If we are going to be our own god (Genesis 3:5), we cannot share our throne with anyone else. From events in the news to people in our lives to even the God of the universe, we need to relate to the world on a spectrum of personal relevance, engaging with what advances us and ignoring what does not.
But imagine for a moment what today would be like if the all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God were truly in charge of it. Imagine following his “perfect” will in every decision (Romans 12:2). Imagine receiving his omnipotent strength in every need (Philippians 4:13). Imagine being “more than conquerors” in “all things” (Romans 8:32, 37).
Imagine Jesus continuing his earthly ministry through us as his “body” in the world today (John 14:12; 1 Corinthians 12:27). This and nothing less is what the Christian life is supposed to be. Not just salvation from hell, but a joyous partnership with the King of kings that transfuses every temporal moment with eternal significance.
Dwight Moody’s advice is both logical and transforming:
“Let God have your life. He can do more with it than you can.”
Who is on the throne of your heart right now?
“We are all servants. The only question is whom we will serve.” —R. C. Sproul
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