“Expect both the Senseless and Profound Comfort.”

4/25/99

“Expect both the Senseless and Profound Comfort.”

Jeraldine was telling me about a story she read recently in Guideposts magazine.  It was about a father who lost a daughter in the Oklahoma City bombing.

The father told how for so long he had been eaten up with bitteness.  In a sense he has never gotten over his sense of loss,  but he found some healing in regard to his bitterness,  when he actually met the father of Timothy McVeith. 

He spent time with him.  They took a walk in Mr.  McVeith’s garden.  Then the two men went into the house and cried together.

The bombing in Oklahoma City was so senseless.

And we have a lot of senlessness around us right now don’t we?

I’m not sure we can exactly compare these things,  but they seem to have something in common.

Matthew Shepherd’s death in Wyoming.

Amadou Diallo’s death in Brooklyn.

The ethnic cleansing which we see going on in Kosovo.

And  now this senseless horror which has taken place in Littleton,  CO.

If we were given the opportunity to be with these mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers who lost loved ones, what would we say to them if they asked us why this happened?

Would we try to explain it to them in such a way as to make sense of it?

I think that if I was there, and had the opportunity to be with some of these kids and their families,  I would be pretty quiet.  I wouldn’t say very much because I wouldn’t know what to say.  In the face of such unbelievable senselessness,  what is there that we can say?  (pause)

There is a dark side of life which erupts at times and it jolts us and shocks us.  It’s like an earthquake,  and those closest to the epicenter can be absolutely crushed.

And whereas when an earthquake happens scientists can tell us why they happen,  when acts of random violence human occur,  we really don’t have any satisfactory explanation.  We’re numbed by these kinds of events.  And we struggle to some how understand.

Elijah slaughtered the priests of Baal.

Herod had all the firstborn killed.

Jesus was crucified.

The early Christians were fed to the lions.

The Institutional Church burned those who disagreed with her.

Eur-Americans treated native americans and africans as inhuman.

Hitler and his followers exterminated as many Jews as thy could.

In one decade alone, four remarkable Americans,  John and Robert Kennedy,  Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were violently gunned down.

We live in a world where,  sadly,  a part of growing up is to realize that unfathomable horror can occur at any time.  We can expect it.  It’s part of the territory.

Well friends,  I’m very happy that there’s more to say than this.

I’m thankful that there’s more to our world than Kosovos and Littletons.