WHY?!

As I was beginning to organize my thoughts to write about my busy week with Serve the City, our friend Kristen visiting, our 2 yr. anniversary, and plenty of other things, my mind continued to wander back to the tragedy in Colorado.  There seems to be some suspicion (though yet unproved) that the shooter at the YWAM base and New Life church was the same person.  These are 2 young people who were in their 20's, looking to be involved in changing the world for the better, whose lives have been snuffed out. And 2 young teenage girls, shot dead next to their father who was also wounded.  I've had a lot of good friends involved in YWAM (one here in Ireland who actually attended the YWAM school in Colorado).  We also have friends and financial partners at New Life and have attended services there in the past.  Kristy's sister and brother-in-law live 10 minutes up the motorway from there. 

I can't imagine the horror of having Caitlyn shot dead while walking by my side as we leave a church service.

This is hard stuff.  Inevitably, there'll be a lot of Christians talking about how these are 4 young people who are now "in a better place" and "God is in control" and "evil is man's fault, not God's" etc., etc.  But how many Christians will think of the YWAM students, several of whom were also shot and wounded, who saw their close friends violently murdered in the comfortable, ostensibly safe confines of their dorm.  You know - the kind of thing you're used to only seeing in the latest Quentin Terantino film.  Those kids will never be the same.  And who will think of that father.  Or the hundreds of other men, women, and children who witnessed that nightmarish scene as they were walking out of a church service with only the expectation of heading out for lunch with family or friends. 

It's far easier to trivialize these events with cutesy cliches and flowery verbage, allowing it to medicate ourselves from the reality of the face of evil staring right at us.  But I, for one, am feeling rather enraged, doubtful, and confused.  And I'm okay with that.  Sort of.  I mean, it's not nice feeling this way.  But I think it's good for us to hold back the tendency to make immediate sense of it all and, instead, to identify with those who are suffering unimaginably.  To feel their anguish.  To be reminded of the heart-wrenching ugliness of wickedness.  To actually have a difficult time seeing God through the fog.

Comments

[emma]

Thanks for being honest! I think thats one of the main things I'm learning at the minute... "sit under it"... this phrase. That it's ok to not have this sorted all the time, to have doubts and fears and be confused sometimes. I think sometimes we do God a disservice by trying to rush the in-between, painful, confused stage and leap-frog to the everythings-fine-no-problem mask that we wear too easily.

Their lives will be changed forever. I know God's got it under control. But that doesn't always stop it from hurting like hell right now.

[Brandon]

Well said, Emma. Thanks for your thoughts.