Learning, and Growing, from a Tragedy:

Senator Creigh Deeds is a local lawyer and politician.  He has invested his life in the area where I'm privileged to live.  Over the past few days an incredible tragedy that struck his family has received national attention.  I've included some links to news articles at the end of this STTA.  The short version of what happened is that Creigh's son, Gus, suffering from mental illness, attacked his father with a knife, and after inflicting life-threatening wounds, killed himself with a gun.  That kind of grief on grief would cause many to crawl into a hole.  State Senator Deeds not only returned to his post in the Virginia legislature, but has mounted a campaign to address some of the short-comings in the way our society, particularly our governmental agencies address mental health problems.

  

What is one to do with the tragedy that comes into life lived in this sin-cursed world?  

  

The Apostle Paul talks to the point in 2 Corinthians 1.

  

   "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ." (2 Corinthians 1:3-5, NASB95)  

 

Who wants to sign up for such ministry?   

I can see hands not going up all over the place.  Mine are in my pockets.  As I look back over forty years of small church pastoring, I see a lot of those who ought to be "able to comfort those who are in any affliction."  As is always the case, ability does not necessarily equal performance.  I've observed some who became bitter, and others who became marvelous ministers of God's grace.  

The kind of grief the Deeds family is dealing with is off the chart.  Though few of us will be called on to deal with this kind of head-line tragedy, and most of us lack positions of power and prominence, still each of us are called on to work to a place in our pain where it becomes a platform from which we can reach out to others who hurt.

 

I didn't sign up.  It's just the way it is.

  

It's STTA.  

 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/26/politics/creigh-deeds-attack/ 

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/creigh-deeds-on-mental-health-legislation-weve-got-some-hard-work-to-do/ 

 

http://www.roanoke.com/news/politics/article_b41917ea-8769-11e3-a5d1-001a4bcf6878.html 

Thoughts on 9/11:

It was Tuesday. I was in my office working. Kathy called and told me there was an explosion or something in New York. What I did next says a lot about me, and the condition of our world. I just confirmed my recollection by looking at a list of terrorist incidents that took place in the time just before 9/11. (also here) Bombs--suicide, car, and otherwise--attacks on trains, buildings and historic monuments, and man-made tragedies of all sorts had become common place. Less than a year before the USS Cole had a massive hole blown in its side. Distance and repetition had removed the terror from terrorism for me. The flow of blood in the newspaper and on the news, combined with troubles closer to home had made me more numb than I wish I were. I just kept working.


As I remember, Kathy called me again a few minutes later. Like many of you, she had been watching the horror unfolding. I heard an emotion in her voice that I had only heard at times of family deaths or other major troubles. I knew that this was beyond the wickedness that, for me had become the new normal. I came home and struggled to take in the magnitude of what had just happened.

It is a balancing act with which we all need to struggle. Somewhere, right now there is likely some atrocity that is being planned, carried out, or just inflicted on innocent people, yet this morning I need to take a helium tank back to a vendor, return some borrowed equipment we used at a church event last night, and do this STTA. My wife is going to the dentist. While I type she and I are discussing what we need to do this evening. Life goes on. I can't just quit. On the other hand the numbness to the pain of so many that too easily hardens my heart is troublesome.

I want to be more like my Lord, who when "He saw the multitudes . . . was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd." (Matthew 9:36) I know my capacity for meaningful empathy is infinitely less than Christ's, but I pray . . .

Lord, help me to see and be impacted by the needs of others, and show me what I can do to make a difference. Amen



It's STTA.