God's heart is breaking

I don’t know anyone in Virginia, not the entire state, nor on the campus of Virginia Tech. I’ve never been there either, nor do I know anyone who has, but today, all day, I’m grieving for the great losses in that place. It feels like 9/11. It feels like a frontpage full of car accidents or a tsunami roaring up a beach. It feels worse than my grief when my mother died, and my father.

I was going to go to bed, but can’t stop thinking of a verse. Ephesians 5:30 says, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God . . . .” I know it’s a warning to avoid displeasing God, but it also tells me that He feels grief. I also know He lives in me and I am thinking that this deep grief I feel has something to do with Him.

Some say that God is dead, or God doesn’t care. Some become even more convinced that He does not care after a terrible calamity. They ask, “Where is God?” as if He is gone, or has turned His back and stopped loving them. Why did He let this happen? What purpose can He have for this?

A Canadian newsman, Gordon Sinclair, used to ask those questions. He often said, “How can a loving God allow children to die?

I know his angst. I’ve felt like that, more than once. Sinclair’s question hits our hearts because deep inside we know that God should be loving, and to us, loving means mercy and kindness. What happened to His love yesterday in Virginia?

Someone asked Sinclair, “If God were not loving, what would be the matter with untimely death?” What is it that makes us cry our outrage at human tragedy and loss? That person wanted the skeptic to examine where his idea of goodness and love came from. If we didn’t know love from God, would we really care if anyone was killed or not, particularly strangers in another part of the world?

I watched 9/11 on television, over and over. Afterwards, I thought my pain came from too much visual trauma, but I didn’t see any of yesterday’s massacre, and barely listened to any news. Still, the pain and grief is as intense. Why?

This pain tells me that God is not gone, nor has He turned His back. I don’t know why He doesn’t stop all evil (only that one day He will), or why He didn't stop this horrid evil, but I do know that He cares when someone sins against themselves, against Him, against others, destroying them, destroying himself.

This is God’s grief. All those who died, all those who were injured, all those who are filled with great sorrow, even that one man who did it and then took his own life, all this has filled God with pain. I know. His anguish spills over into my heart and He asks me to sob for Him.