About seven years ago, I was serving a small church west of Fort Worth, Texas, while attending seminary. My wife and I had finished Wednesday night activities at church and had come home to our small duplex apartment. As we walked toward the house, I noticed a lot of helicopter activity in the air a couple of miles away. I remember wondering out loud, ?Looks like something’s going on over there. Wonder if it’s on the news?? We went inside, my wife went to the back of the apartment and I flipped on the television. Yes, something was going on and, yes, the event was on the news. Every local station. Wall-to-wall coverage. I can’t describe the sinking feeling I had when it registered in my mind what had happened.
As we had been going about our normal routine, a gunman entered the sanctuary of Wedgwood Baptist Church and shot and killed several people, many of them teenagers worshiping at a ?See You at the Pole? rally. I saw images of people I knew, people I attended classes with, dazed and confused and trying to comfort others when they themselves needed comforting.
The Columbine incident happened not too long after that, and other school shootings followed. There have been several this week alone. But that sinking feeling didn’t accompany the rest of these events. Perhaps because I was far removed from these other situations and didn’t know anyone involved, but I don’t think that’s why. I think, just like everything else, with enough exposure, even the worst tragedies become almost ordinary. I don’t say that proudly; I think it is much to our discredit that this is the case.
The closest feelings I have felt to those I had on the night of the Wedgwood shootings came yesterday, when news of execution-style killings in a quiet Amish community quickly spread. Children who had been shielded from images such as the one they were forced to endure had their lives ended. I can’t begin to imagine the pain that community (and others) are experiencing this morning.
I will never forget Wedgwood’s Pastor, Al Meredith, and his press conference on the night of the shootings there. He had literally just returned from burying his mother. Holding back his own tears, he said this (this is not a word-for-word quote, but it’s very close): ?I’ve been asked where God was tonight. God was in the same place tonight that He was two thousand years ago when His own Son was killed.? (Here is the text to Pastor Meredith’s sermon the Sunday following the shootings.)
Yes, He was. And is. And evermore will be. Praise be to God!
[...] tasting death far too closely for at least a second time. She was in the church at the time of the Wedgwood shootings; her best friend was shot and killed right in front of her. Death is a cruel [...]