There Are No Words.

I'm sitting in Starbucks trying to write a paper on how to fix our nation's educational system. Impossible.
I feel sick.
Just saw the news of dozens of kids in CT killed in a mass shooting at school. Babies, really. The report that I read said much of it happened in a kindergarten class. Babies that would be friends of my own baby.
Gosh, unfathomable.
There's no sense in it. Children. God, anyone but our children.
My mind has been wandering through the silence of God in so many ways lately. Where are you God? How long must we wait for you to show up? How long? I so believe that you are a God of love, compassion, and mercy. And justice. God is just. I believe these things with every fiber of my being. But these days come, when we see how much we hurt each other, when nothing makes sense. When our babies are murdered.
How long, God?
I can scream these questions at God. Are you even there? Are you good, God? I can ask and shout and scream my doubt. It can get pretty ugly sometimes, when that doubt creeps in.
He can handle it though.

And the answer will still be yes.
Yes, He is good.
Yes, he hears our cries for deliverance.
Yes, he knows our pain.

When I hear of senseless, horrible tragedies like this, I think my mind will always go back to Cambodia. To the Killing Fields. To the tree. That tree is forever etched in my mind. Against that tree where children were horribly, senselessly murdered. And it leads me to another tree. God, how could it not? Because the Story, the workings of this tree run through me. Only when life is framed through looking at this tree can any of this senselessness make sense.

Emmanuel.
God is with us.
Truly with us. Emptying himself of all God-rights to save us. Taking on our sin.
On a tree.

The Prince of Peace.
Stepping into our pain.
Knowing it so fully, yet never retaliating or hurting when hurt.
Fully drinking from the cup of human suffering.

Yet there's human suffering all around.
still.
He waits.

And there's such hope in that waiting.
He will redeem it all.
Oh God, we are desperate for your redemption.

Death. He conquered.
Life. He gives.
Horrible, brokenness. He heals.

Resurrection.
The power to make all things right in this world.
He holds.
Divine justice.
It will come.
It has come.
But someday, in all it's fullness.
Shalom.
The only hope of a world turned mad.

We mourn, we weep with those whose pain is unbearable to bear alone. We share in it with them. We comfort through our tears, our presence, our remembering. There are no words. We trust. And live expectantly in hope. And until that Hope returns, we are the tangible expressions of it for each other. We work to right all these wrongs. We work and we pray and we don't give up or turn a blind eye. We love as he loved.

God help us love in days like this.