February 27

Sometimes, our hearts are broken open.  With pain, with grief.  In utter shock and full of questions.  A school shooting just an hour away leaves me feeling numb and sick to my stomach.  How does this keep happening?  What can we do to make this senseless violence stop?  What can we do to help our students understand that they are loved, preventing yet another horrific day, yet another tragic death, yet another life ended even as it is really just beginning?  I just don't understand and have so many unanswered questions.  I fear that we become numb the more we become overwhelmed.  I fear that we have become too used to these things happening.  We cannot shrug these days off.  They are too real and, unfortunately, becoming too common, not just in this country, but around the world.  Tragic, violent death at the hand of another human being.  If we are created in God's image, why can't we see the beauty, the worth in one another?  What keeps us from looking at another person and seeing not an enemy, but a reflection of God's grace?  Sin, sin, the answer is sin.  I know the answer, but I still do not understand.

My faith tells me that we find God somehow in the midst of these moments, grieving along side us, comforting us in the midst of grief that is too much to bear.  And yet, the words of Psalm 22 echo in my head--"my God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"  And of Psalm 13--"how long, o Lord, will you hide your face from me?"  Deep, deep lament.  Questions.  So many questions.  Today, they're laments for all of us--why have you abandoned us?  How long will you hide your face from us?  I trust that God is not hiding from us, that God has not abandoned us, but that is hard to see on these days filled with despair.  That is hard to remember as the timeline is layed out and the news replays the events of the day.  As young people, not unlike the ones I love so dearly, gather to mourn the loss of innocence and the loss of life.  Today, as we do everyday, we need to watch for God.  We are not abandoned.  We are not alone.  I have to believe that God is grieving today, too.  And that, out of this deep darkness, somehow, there will be light.