Grief
Posted by celebrationfood on April 16, 2007
What are we to feel when we see children dead, their lives lost for no reason? The lively minds of the college students who died today at Virginia Tech lived within bodies at their peak of fitness and beauty. And this optimal physical and intellectual state was intended by God to create loving unions and the new lives that issue from these bonds. The contributions of these young men and women to our world would have been important, meaningful, and productive to the state of life everywhere.
One commentator on television noted that this incident is creating huge press in the US, but this scale of loss occurs every day in Iraq. Of course, that fact does not reduce our collective sense of loss but increases it instead, as we add seven more young people, US servicemen and women, to our total of those lost on this day, April 16, 2007. Many Iraqis suffer today in the same way that we do in far greater numbers. We hurt for them but can’t know their pain.
We have no capacity for retribution in any of these instances. Jesus never said that we can do more than look at our world with loving eyes and ask for his help when we pray, “Please dear Lord, make this evil stop. Give us love sufficient to heal the wrongs in our world and those who suffered today.”
Amen
