This Broken World

With the terrible events yesterday and the anniversary of the massacre at Virginia Tech happening in such a small time frame, it feels impossible for me to not reflect. I find myself reflecting upon this experience in many ways with many emotions. I feel anger, disappointment, fear, sadness. So many emotions that come easily to the surface when our world is flooded with death and chaos.

So many of these experiences have characteristics that force me to reflect upon my own experience of tragedy. Over the past 24 hours I have been forced to remember the amount of misinformation that happens after a tragedy such as this. People are desperate for information. I can't really blame them. I recall watching the TV on the morning of April 16th, 2007 seeing the numbers spiking from 2 dead to 10 dead, and on and on. But I also recall the pain of thinking that someone I loved was one of those numbers. We find ourselves glued to televisions or news websites trying to gather as much information as we can. We find ourselves searching desperately for the facts.

I think that part of the reason we search for these facts is because we really want to understand. We want to know how it happened, who was involved, and what exactly occurred. We want to know all of the whats, whens, wheres because we believe that the facts will help us understand the whys. The facts will help us make sense of such a terrible thing.

The only kind of reflection I find myself capable of at this point is the theological kind. It's the only thing to which I can resort. I am reminded that we live in a broken world. In fact, this is what I've been telling myself since the explosions yesterday. I've heard myself say, "What a broken world we live in. What a sinful, broken world." We live in a world full of pain and sorrow, death and destruction. The evidence is more real and present than we could even imagine. The facts about the broken world we live in are abundant.

It is in our nature to ask why. It is crucial to our innate coping skills to try to understand the reason behind tragedy. We want to say, "This is the reason it happened. This is why." Unfortunately, the question we most want answered is either the hardest question to answer, or the question which has no answer. This is not a reason to stop asking our why question. The brokenness of our world is not an excuse for inaction or apathy. Rather, an understanding of our broken world can help us frame our desire for understanding. When we realize that there is a level of understanding which we cannot reach, we can give ourselves the space to mourn without agenda.

Knowing this, one of the things I try to give myself is just the space to mourn. For me, music achieves this purpose to a large degree, and writing music helps me cope. This hymn is not a new one, I posted it after the Newtown tragedy, but with the anniversary of April 16th and the violence of the past days, it feels pertinent again.

Our hearts and souls they seem to ache,

When we such horrors witness bear,

The bonds of trust they start to break,

Lives tossed aside without a care.

How can there be such senseless death?

Why must our tears so freely fall?

We cry to God with all our breath,

And hear no comfort when we call.

My hope on nothing seems to rest,

my strength begins to give away,

In all the pain I try my best,

But terror is what now holds sway.

Though stranded and alone we feel,

As though beyond all sort of aide,

Our Lord has promised presence real,

In pain and woe, when we're afraid.

To the Lord's presence tight I hold,

When nothing else have I to do.

Through the despair of shadow cold,

Only my God can pull me through.

I encourage you to find the space that you need to mourn without agenda.