The starting-point is to stop and grieve. To pause before we change the channel or read another story and acknowledge that something utterly terrible has happened. Thankfully, the Bible helps us to find the words we sometimes feel too polite to voice. When we read a passage of lament such as Psalm 88, we face the fact that we do not have the answer to such acts of random cruelty and destruction.
Another modest but meaningful way to respond to someone else’s tragedy is, of course, to pray – if not for world peace, at least for the victims and their families. We can also say a harder prayer – in this case for the family of Charles Roberts, the man who shot the girls before he shot himself.
Lament and prayer may not bring us into contact with those who have suffered so appallingly, but they do direct our emotions, bring us closer to the pain of others and appeal to God to help in ways that we cannot.
Yet our engagement does not have to stop there. When God seems distant, or absent altogether, we should remember too that we are, in part at least, the answer to our own prayers: the Maker’s hands and feet in this malfunctioning world, asked to collaborate with the Spirit, each with our own unique job to do.
It is unlikely that we can do much about many – if any – of the evils we see or read about in the news. Yet for every Charles Roberts, whose own secret griefs and grievances seem to have festered over many years into something truly diabolical, there are millions of others who are struggling to forgive or to find forgiveness, who are desperate for some grace and love. Every time we can help to effect a transformation in somebody’s life, it is good news. Even if it doesn’t make the headlines.
Paradise may seem a world away, but as Jesus prayed and acted, so should we: ‘Your will be done, your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.’
Brian Draper
Reproduced with permission: © The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity
