The brutal murders—first of young Irina Zarutskaya, then of the well-known but equally young politician Charlie Kirk—have shaken the global community in recent days. For a long time, I could not find words to express my inner state regarding what had happened, until the word "groaning" came to my heart from the Epistle to the Romans, where the Apostle Paul writes:

"For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope..." (Romans 8:22-24 (NKJV))

It is precisely this word—"groaning"—that I believe well expresses not only my state but also the state of many Christians around the world. With the coming of darkness comes blindness as well. For some, this means indignation and expressing evil toward evil, but as believers we know that evil cannot overcome evil. Our Lord showed us the path by which we overcome and will ultimately defeat evil—it is the path of suffering and death for truth. Today, we groan as we witness all this evil happening around us, and this serves as a good reminder that we are saved in hope. We are not yet what we ought to be, but we are on the path to that revelation—the revelation of the sons of God within us.

Darkness hates light and opposes it in every way. Charlie Kirk was a bearer of such light who, like an Old Testament yet contemporary prophet, powerfully exposed the works of darkness. Evil, as always, could not withstand good and truth and resorted to its base and ancient methods—to kill the prophet, to stone him, to rain bullets upon him. Evil knows its days are numbered. Just as with the death of Jesus Christ, God raised up billions of followers for Him, so with Charlie's death, God will raise up thousands of Charlies who will speak truth even louder and more widely, because "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church" (Tertullian).