One of my Facebook friends, a youth pastor in Connecticut, shared a blog post from a pastor in Boston reflecting on yesterday’s bombing during the Boston Marathon (you can read his blog here). I think the pastor’s thoughts reflect even how we are feeling, miles away from those tragic events.
We are OK – Physically, we are fine. We were not hurt by the bombs, and there is a part of us that thinks that ought to be enough. In many ways, we are OK.
We are not OK – But in other ways we aren’t. We are filled with questions, fears, and a pit in our stomachs that something like this could happen. Why is there so much hatred in the world, and how could people just randomly cause harm to others? We wonder about the next time we go to a sporting event, or any other event where a crowd of people will gather. We wonder about our general safety wherever we find ourselves. We put ourselves in the place of the victims, and wonder what it is like to go from celebration to sadness in the blink of an eye. We are OK, but we’re not OK.
We will be OK – The good news of the Gospel of Jesus is we will be OK. There is healing, strength, and hope in knowing no matter what happens, God is still God and we are loved by him. Sure there is a lot of difficulty in our world, but there is hope – signs of which we see in the trained first responders and ordinary citizens, who did all they could to help in the midst of tragedy. We also know there is a day to come when God “will wipe every tear from [our] eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (Revelation 12:4 NRSV). We know one day, we will be OK, even if that’s not how we’re feeling right now.
So wherever you are, whatever you are feeling, know the rest of us are just as mixed up. In many ways we are OK, and we’re not OK, but we know we will be OK.