This probably isn’t the first thing you’ve read about the horrific, deadly mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville on Monday. Chances are, your social media feed is full of sadness and outrage, not to mention differing opinions on how Christians should respond to gun violence.
And yet, despite the millions of words spoken, we haven’t found the solution to our fear. Many of us have hugged our children a little tighter before sending them off to school, a place we so desperately want to believe is safe. What is there to say when a tragedy leaves us speechless?
“As pastors, we are supposed to have the words,” Nathan Parker, the senior pastor at Woodmont Baptist Church where Covenant parents waited for news about their children, told CT. “Today was one of those days that words didn’t come easy. If they came, they came from the Spirit.”
There is no combination of words that will erase our fears. But there is the Holy Spirit, referred to by Jesus himself as “the comforter.” As we lament, pray, and respond, may we remember that when evil darkens our days, the Spirit mourns with us as one ever present to our grief.