Tragedy

Yesterday, the state of Georgia was rocked with the news of five young Georgia Southern students who were killed in a multi-car wreck on I-16.  The five young women were nursing students on the way to a clinical in Savannah.  From the pictures I've seen of them on social media, they were full of life and enthusiasm.  Sometimes you can see it in a smile.  I thought of a few of my dearest friends who have daughters at GSU.  It could have been them.  They're about the same age.  It hits close to home.

Simply, there is not real answer for tragedy.  Shame us when we try to find one.  God did NOT need five more angels.  God's got plenty of angels, and we humans don't become angels anyway.  It wasn't 'their time to go.'  No one has a time.  It wasn't God's will.  My God is not in the business of killing young, vibrant college students.  Everything does NOT happen for a reason.  Sometimes there are no reasons.  Sometimes there is simply tragedy that interrupts life.

We live in a broken world where sin, death, and tragedy are a reality.  There was a plan in which it was not like this.  It was called Eden.  But the brokenness of humanity knocked this world off it's axis, and we've seen heartache and tragedy ever since.  It was not God's original design that we would ever see death.

To believe that God wills our deaths and controls events is a tragic and unfortunate kind of thinking.  It doesn't reveal the true heart of God and the greatest promises of Scripture.  Tragedy simply happens.  Our broken world rears its ugly head sometimes.  Life derails just because it does.  There are no reasons, no greater plan, and no answers.

But there are promises.  God's promise is that He is with us, even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.  He comforts us.  He does not and will not abandon us, no matter how bleak it seems.  My hope and prayer for those families of those precious girls is that they would know the abiding presence of God in these days and the days to come.

And there is another promise.  We weren't supposed to taste death, but we did.  The fall of humanity in Genesis carved a path that each of us have followed.  Since the beginning, we have had a death problem.  God fixed that.  That's why Easter matters to us.  Those of us who follow Christ are still in the 'Easter Season' in which we are celebrating Christ's resurrection from the grave.  We believe Jesus defeated death.  And the hope of the Christian is that, in Christ, we will, too.  Not only in eternal life, but in the resurrection to come.  We really believe that.  We believe that God is with us in the valley, and that one day we will rise again, stare death in the face and say, "Where, o death, is your victory; where is your sting?"  

In the face of tragedy, let us not say the trite things that end up being hurtful more than helpful.  There is no reason for these things.  God is as heartbroken as us.  He weeps at our broken world.  He weeps at our death.  But He is with us, and he has been devising a plan to win back His people over death since the beginning.  May those who face tragedy rests in His presence, and may we all hope in His promises.