This past summer our church hosted a reading program called Project Transformation. It's really much more than a reading program. It is an opportunity for children to spend time together, to work on their reading skills, to work on their social skills, and to help them succeed in school. The program emphasizes the success of the students and the success of the congregation where they meet. Along with this, the program gives space for college interns to work with the children, to make a good wage for a summer job, and to explore and question their plans for future careers.
We had a wonderful summer. Our site coordinator and interns were fun, they were loving, and they were great to work with. Every one of them was loved by all the students and the volunteers from the congregation.
We were met on Monday with the devastating news that one of the college interns who had served at our church, a wonderful 19 year old woman, was shot and killed.
What to think? What to say?
In my Sunday School class, we have been watching videos from the Memphis Theological Seminary Sunday Morning Seminary program, now called Pulpit and Pew. Here's a link if you are interested: https://memphisseminary.edu/pulpitandpew/. The most recent study, presented by Dr. Lee Ramsey, has been about grief. In one of his presentations, he posted several things not to say to people who are grieving. They were things like, "God just needed and angel," or, "At least (insert whatever you like here)," or things like this. One thing that we must be mindful not to say in situations like this is "It must have just been God's plan."
I am a minister, and I do not believe everything that happens is God's plan. When we read scripture, we often see what God's plan is, and we see how people ruin it. Sometimes God is able to redeem those things in some way, but often the damage has been done.
And I can't help but think of the many damages the loss of this one woman's life may cause in the world. She had a brother and cousin that she brought to camp every day. That's why she got the job. What might she have been in their lives moving forward? We won't know.
She had a loving heart and a bright mind and offered a lot to our world. What might she have done? We'll never know.
God's plan isn't a plan for suffering. God's plan isn't violent death or pandemics or hurricanes. God's plan is for love, God's plan is for justice, God's plan is for good.
Sometimes terrible things happen because of nature. More often they happen because humans made a wrong turn.
And the loss of one person like this young woman resounds through history. All those losses, to war, to starvation, to suicide, to cancer, they all resound, because those people aren't where they were meant to be. Because those people aren't where they were meant to be, the world suffers, and maybe someone else is sent down a wrong path.
Tragedy is not God's plan. It must not be, not if we serve a God who loves us.
And so, I can only believe God grieves with us, and I can only hope that, as God sometimes does, God can create something redemptive from the sorrow.
It is overwhelming to me to think that, as much as I grieve for the loss of a woman I worked with for two months, how her family must feel, and how the families of all those torn from us must feel, and I cannot process all that pain.
I only, simply believe--hope--that God can.
May God be with all who grieve.
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