Hope in Sadness

Just imagine, picture your little one. Picture helping your child get to school one morning, it is a regular day, just like any there day. You help to dress him/her up, prepare the tooth brush at the sink, then make sure things are packed in the school bag.

You bring your child downstairs to take the school bus, hearing the little chatter and laughter as he gets on the bus, you hug your little one and tell him, “Bye! Enjoy your day at school!” You take the lift back home, walk into your kitchen and have your breakfast while reading the papers.

1 hour later. A phone rings, and the policeman on the other line tells you something happened at school and you need to make your way there asap. Your heart beats rapidly, not knowing what to expect, but you quickly make your way down to your child’s school.

As you get to the school, you see the throngs of cars and police cars parked outside the school. Many parents walking around, some teary, others with eyes wild with fear, many screaming at the policemen at the scene for answers. You see a policeman, and you ask, “What happened? Is my child ok?” Policeman tells you he doesn’t know yet and walk away. You try to get into the school, but the policemen outside tell you to wait.

After a hour of what feels like eternity, a policeman walk towards you, ask you for your name. He looks at his list and a look of empathy crosses his face, your heart drops when you see his expression. “This can’t be happening…what has happened to my baby. Please let this be a nightmare, please I have to wake up!”

And all you can think of at that moment is – My baby is gone. He is gone! He will not be home after school, you don’t have to worry about what he is going to eat today, or what time he is going to bed tonight. You will never be able to hug and kiss him on this earth, you will never be able to laugh at his little jokes. No more opportunity to tell him how much you love him, and feel his little arms hug you back to tell you he loves you too.

Please take a moment now to say a prayer for each parent who lost their child in the tragedy in Connecticut.

Most of us go on with our lives after a day or two when the news settle, thinking that ‘stuff like that will never happen to us here in Singapore…’ or ‘it has nothing to do with me, it is in a foreign country,’ or simply, ‘thank goodness, it did not happened to me,’ or ‘US government should just ban guns,’ or simply get caught up by indiscretions publicized by the local media of people in our country.

I mourn with the parents who mourn for the loss of their children.

There have always been a lot of positivity in this blog. But there are times like these when I find it hard to only address the good and not look and reflect on the real things that happen in life. My Twitter updates are assailed by updates after updates of tragedy of deaths of innocents daily, through wars or violence. And it is easy to start being apathetic, since we live in a safe country without conflict or wars, and tragedies like that usually does not happen to us.

If some of you are the more reflective sort may have this question at the back of your minds, “If there is a good God, why does He allow such tragedy to befall on the innocents?’

What happened to those innocents were pure evil. And we live in a broken world where good and evil exist. This causes a huge hole into the blind optimism of ‘Every Cloud has a silver lining,’ as there are some clouds which are black all through.

This is how hope comes in the face of unthinkable wickness-ness and sadness. It comes by the way of knowing that God is there, and He is comforting those even now with such deep and stabbing pain. So close to Christmas, perhaps presents are already wrapped under the tree. These parents’ Christmas will never be the same, their lives here will never be the same again.

“Thus says the LORD:  ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.’” Jeremiah 31:15

This tragedy is compounded by the fact that it comes in such close proximity to Christmas, but I am reminded that there was the mass murder of children in the Christmas story as well. King Herod’s murderous decree that all baby boys under two years of age should be killed prompted Matthew to cite this very verse from Jeremiah. That Rachel was weeping for her children.

But this is not where either Jeremiah or Matthew leaves us. By God’s mercy, for those of us in Christ, there is hope and the promise of full restoration in Christ.

I know God will bring good out of this evil. We can’t know when, and don’t know how or what. But I know this is how God works, as this is who and how He is.

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