Tag Archives: tragedy

Blue Christmas

This past Wednesday, Geri led our New Life staff team through a Blue Christmas service. It was so profoundly moving, that we plan to do it with our whole church later this month. A Blue Christmas service is a space created for people to grieve their losses while holding on to the reality that Jesus is the Light and Savior of the world. It is usually held around the winter solstice (December 21 or 22), the longest night of the year and the day that marks the start of winter. Theologically, it integrates the fuller Christmas story – both the joy surrounding Jesus’ birth and Herod’s horrific slaughter of all the male children two years old and younger. For many people the Christmas holidays are a painful time. A loved one has died. Others have lost meaningful relationships, marriages, jobs, security, or a sense of direction. Others find themselves battling cancer or some other health crisis. Read more.

The Boston Marathon Tragedy

Yesterday’s attack at the Boston Marathon was tragic. What can we say to others? to ourselves? Where was God? I offer you two fragments that help me in times like this. 1. Be comfortable in being silent. Job’s three friends “wept aloud, tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was (Job 2:11-13). It is when they started talking that they got in trouble! Notice their presence “with him,’ i.e. Job, in his suffering. 2. The ultimate knowledge of God is to know that we do not know. Thomas Aquinas was a brilliant theologian who had written 20 very large volumes about who God is and how He works. On December 6, 1273 something happened to him that brought his teaching and writing to an end.. Read more.

God's Splendor as Sorrow – Final Reflection, Newtown, CT

Watching the funerals of the teachers and children this past week has been heart-wrenching for the nation. “Where is/was God?” we ask. I close our week with words that serve me in these days. This excerpt is quoted from the Daily Office: Begin the Journey (WCA). Nicholas Wolterstorff, former theological professor at Yale, lost his twenty-five year old son to a mountain-climbing accident. He didn’t have any answers as to why God allowed such a tragedy. Who does? At one point, however, he came upon a great insight: “Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God. It is said of God that on one can behold his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one can see his splendor and live. A friend said perhaps this meant that no one can see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is his splendor.”

Learning to Lament – Newtown, CT

The painful images of the funerals of the children from Sandy Hook elementary school is an invitation from God for us to learn to lament. David not only sang this lamentation; he ordered the people to learn it, memorize it and inhabit it as their experience. After the terrible, tragic deaths of Saul and Jonathan, we read: David took up this lament concerning Saul and his son Jonathan, and ordered that the men of Judah be taught this lament of the bow: “Your glory, O Israel, lies slain on your heights. How the mighty have fallen!…Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon….O daughters of Israel, weep for Saul …How the mighty have fallen in battle! Jonathan lies slain on your heights. 2 Samuel 1:17-20; 24-25 Eugene Peterson says it well: “Pain isn’t the worst thing… Death isn’t the worst thing. The worst thing is failing to deal with. Read more.

Sean Bell and the Local Church

Last Friday a judge acquitted three NYPD detectives of all charges in the shooting death of 23-year-old Sean Bell who was killed by 50 bullets fired outside a Queens strip club on what would have been his wedding day in November of 2006. It was a tragedy for all involved. There were no winners in this case.What does it mean for New Life Fellowship Church as we find ourselves in the midst of this crisis? In fact, a father of one of our young adults told me his son actually was the one who introduced Sean Bell to his finance and that he attended the funeral. We have police officers in our church that will probably be guarding the picket lines for the protests this week. We also have members who will be marching in protest. So we have Christians protesting and Christians guarding the protest. Apparently some of the Bell family knew Christ. Read more.

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