SHOCK AND AWE
OVERPOWERING SADNESS, UNSPEAKABLE GRIEF

Any intelligent, reasonably sensitive person is moved by reports coming out of Blacksburg, Virginia, since the shooting on the Virginia Tech campus. The President made a visit and appropriately expressed shock and dismay as he offered words of comfort to those whose family members and friends had been killed. From all over America religious leaders have offered prayers. Jim Standiford, pastor of First United Methodist Church in San Diego sent a special e-mail letter to his parishioners and scheduled a special prayer meeting. Below is an excerpt from his letter:

“An incomprehensible tragedy like the shootings at Virginia Tech calls us to pray.

As the church, we are in the midst of the Easter season. Our worship calls us to hope in a living God, who has power and meaning beyond both life and death. Tragic violence, like the brutal ugliness of the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus, challenges us to find hope in its midst. Where it seems distant, we pray for God's presence and blessing.

We pray for the memory of those who have died, whose lives ended too quickly, with unspeakable violence. We give thanks for their lives, and pray comfort for their families.

We pray for the safety of the Virginia Tech campus.

We pray for those who have been injured, and for those whose sense of security is shattered.

We pray that students, everywhere, would be safe.

We pray for freedom from fear.

Our hearts raise prayer to God with an ache that words cannot name.”
-------------------------------

Of course, I agree with EVERYTHING DR. STANDIFORD SAYS IN HIS LETTER, BUT...

My heart and my mind cry out with every sentence. His words remind me of questions I have been asking for the past four years. Where is the church’s dismay over continuing tragedies in Iraq? On the day the shooter killed thirty-two people before killing himself in Blacksburg, another one-hundred-and-ten Iraqis were killed by suicide bombers in Bagdad. Today, April 18, the death toll in Baghdad was one-hundred-eighty persons murdered. I don’t know how many others were killed across Iraq. The death toll of Americans in Iraq grows daily. More than a dozen have been killed in the past week.

Perhaps I missed it, but as far as I know there has not been a special prayer service in the midst of Easter or any other season especially to call God’s and the community’s attention to the violence our country has unleashed on Iraq. Are those people not worthy of the church’s attention in a special public meeting? The pastor has said, “Our worship calls us to hope in a living God, who has power and meaning beyond both life and death. Tragic violence, like the brutal ugliness...challenges us to find hope in its midst.” The pastor goes on to say, “ We pray for the memory of those who have died, whose lives ended too quickly, with unspeakable violence. We give thanks for their lives, and pray comfort for their families.”

Pastor Standiford urges us to pray for the safety of the Virginia Tech campus. How often has the church come together in the past four years to pray for the safety of the neighborhoods, the cities, of Iraq and Afghanistan? He goes on to “pray for those who have been injured, and for those whose sense of security is shattered.” He says, “ We pray that students, everywhere, would be safe.” Presumably, that includes students in Iraq and Sudan and Somalia. At least that sentences shows some concern for God’s children who aren’t lucky enough to have American citizenship.

The pastor says, “ We pray for freedom from fear.” My God! I am overwhelmed with grief at my part as an American citizen in sustaining an atmosphere of fear in the lives of every person in Iraq today. I pay taxes. My tax money is used for all kinds of wonderful things that benefit me and my neighbors, but some of my money goes to fund the war. I am complicit, and I don’t like it.

My heart cries because my church has not risen up at the Easter season or any other season to say, STOP! Stop the war! Stop inflicting suffering. Oh, I am well aware of the excuses being giving for not stopping. The President and others who supported him in starting the war say the carnage will be worse in Iraq if armies from outside that country suddenly leave. They say it as if they have forgotten that they were the ones who began the war. They say it as if they expect the rest of us not to remember that they deliberately lied to Congress and to the American people about their reasons for starting the war. They say it as if we are not noticing the tragedies inflicted on innocent Iraqi people every day that the war goes on. I don’t see how it could be worse. It is probably true that the insurgency will become a declared civil war. Perhaps it will be a civil war that might have come even if we had not invaded Iraq; but I must continue to believe that diplomacy would have been more effective than war in solving Iraq’s problems and in addressing the growing threat of terrorism in the world.

The pastor ends his litany of sorrows with, “Our hearts raise prayer to God with an ache that words cannot name.” Amen. Amen. Amen