In Light of Tragedy
I remember April 20th, 1999 very well. You may not remember the date, but I am sure you remember the scene. A school shooting in Colorado. Kids shooting kids. Kids lives ending. Pure evil on display for all to see.
I don’t know if this was the first largely-reported-on school shooting, or just the first one that I remember, but I know that this event changed things. At the time, it felt so far away. I had recently visited my aunt in Colorado, but it still felt so distant. It may have well been another planet. Back then I thought “This would never happen in my town.” How naïve…
This week we learned of a shooting at a school, a Christian school, outside of Nashville. Six lives taken. Seven lives over. Countless people impacted. There are no words to express the sorrow that we feel when we hear of news like this, so close to home. It seems that each time there is another tragedy like this, it becomes more and more real that this could happen at any point, in any town, to any group of people.
Many of us have children in school - all of us know kids who go to school. How fearful it must be to be a student these days…
In the face of tragedy, how can we respond? How can we, as Christ followers, help? How can we show the love of Christ in a time when it feel that God is so far removed from us?
One of God’s prophets, Habbakuk, had these same questions. He cried out to God, asking how long God was going to sit there and watch such injustice, pain, and suffering and do nothing about it. God responded to Habbakuk, essentially saying “I am at work among you and you wouldn’t believe me if I told you what I was doing” (Hab. 1:1-5)
The truth is, I don’t know where God is working in this. I don’t have answers and I cannot explain how something like this glorifies the Lord. All that I know is that the Lord has been working in this world since it’s creation and He is working in this.
God told Habbakuk that things were going to get worse before they got better, but He (God) was going to redeem and deliver His people. The short (3 chapter) book ends with Habbakuk praising the Lord for His faithfulness to His people (3:15), and reminds us that the righteous will live by faith (2:4).
Do you believe that God is good? He is! I assure you. Do you believe that He CAN do something in the midst of tragedy? He can! We cannot allow the broken and sinful world that we live in, in which the days are evil (Eph. 5:16), to allow us to question what we know to be true about God. Peter tells us in his first letter that in our suffering we can identify with the Lord, as He came and suffered for us. This does not mean that we should not grieve.
We should be grieved. We should be angry. We should cry out to God, just like His prophet did, and allow Him to guide our answer. King David cried out to God over and over again in the Psalms. Read Psalm 13, let it be the cry of our hearts in the midst of this pain and suffering.
13 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
