We have been through a lot in the last couple years.  The conditions imposed by the pandemic were life-altering.  People lost loved ones.  People lived with the anxiety that they might become ill, that they might die in the ways pictured nightly on the news.  Weddings, graduations, family gatherings, funerals and ordinary social gatherings were interrupted; rites of passage were short-circuited.

The shootings of recent weeks have been particularly traumatic.  Killing people in places that are part of our everyday environment shatters our illusion of safety.  Who wants to think of danger in a grocery store or church or school?  The horror of these shootings has unleashed our shock, our compassion for the victims, our revulsion at the wanton evil that would destroy innocent life because of racial hatred or malignant nihilism.

Those who would turn to the church amid these challenges have been reminded repeatedly of the ways in which the institutional church has chosen to protect itself rather than the ones in its care.  Revelations of abuse and coverup inflict a secondary trauma on those of us who learn about the ways in which institutions we loved and trusted did evil with our unknowing support.

On top of the challenges we have faced together, there are individual griefs and torments that touch our lives: illness, depression, failed relationships, career frustrations, money problems and the anxiety of a radically uncertain future.

In all these situations we can wonder if God is inflicting this trouble on us.  Or we can ask why God would not intervene to prevent these evils from flourishing. 

Sometimes we ask these questions in genuine bewilderment, but most often our questions contain a core of anger at a God who is not living up to the bargain we thought we had struck.

Christians often live with a myth deep down inside that goes something like this: ‘if I live my life the best way I can, resisting the temptations to selfishness and sinfulness, depriving myself of sinful pleasure and advantages that could be gained from wrong-doing, then I should be taken care of, protected from tragedy and grief.’

It’s a pernicious myth because that expectation will always and everywhere be disappointed.  It is not God’s promise that walking with Christ will protect us in any way.  On the contrary, Jesus promised that the way he walked leads to suffering like he endured.

The promise of God is that suffering and grief and death itself is not God’s judgment against us.  Christ promises to walk beside us, bearing our pain with us just as he bears the scars of his crucifixion in his glorified form.  God promises resurrection – not just heaven someday, but life that emerges from our experiences of pain and loss.  God promises that the last word that will be spoken to you is one of welcoming love.  It is this voice that we must listen for when we hear shouts of hate and cries of anguish all around us.

Prayer: What I want is safety and happiness for me and for all I love.  I want to be able to trade my faithful obedience for your blessings.  I hate it that this is not how it works.  Help me to find solace in your abiding presence even when things fall apart.  Give me faith and hope to look for new life and enduring love among the ashes of all that is broken.  Amen.