Ps. 28:7a  “The LORD is my strength and my shield; in Him my heart trusts, and I am helped.”

It’s been hard to think about Christmas for the last few days.  We take a daily paper, but I very seldom listen to radio, and stopped watching TV news after 9/11, nor do I keep an eye out on web news sites during the day.  So, as usual, I first heard of the breaking news Friday via a Facebook post, as a young friend who does keep tabs on web news posted her thoughts and prayers “for all the parents of Sandy Hook.”  A quick google and there it was, in all its unfolding horror.

In their usual rush to get “the scoop”, the news media got a lot wrong in that first day or so, but with time, facts have gotten straightened out.  With many shootings, as days pass, and more information comes out, an explanation emerges.  The explanation is often one that outrages us, but either it makes the horror at least somehow semi-comprehensible, or it at least points out weaknesses in the system that need to be fixed, or policies or procedures that need to be changed, giving us a course of action into which we may pour our energies.  This case, so far as we know at this point, though, is different.  This wasn’t yet another case of a dangerously mentally ill patient whose parents had tried and tried to get help for but who had been failed by the system.  There’s no psychiatrist who will be hung out to dry for not being prescient enough to head off the shooter’s actions.  This wasn’t a case of a bullying victim who’d had all he could take and sought revenge on his tormentors and the rest of the world.  There are no anguished friends grieving that, “I should have seen this coming.  I should have said something.”  There’s fodder for the gun control debate, but there’s nothing we can latch onto for an explanation. 

The Christmas narrative contains the story of another mass murder of children.  Although Luke tells us why Herod ordered the execution, and why he chose the age parameter that he did, there’s nothing to indicate that the parents in Bethlehem and the region around were privy to the information.  The visit of the Magi would have been no secret, of course.  In a big place like Jerusalem, center of so much commerce and trade, their presence might not provoke that much notice, but in a small provincial village such as Bethlehem?  Small town life is small town life, no matter where you go.  Joseph and Mary’s visitors would have provided fodder for talk for quite some time.  Then, too, there was the precipitate departure of Joe and Mary right after their visitors said bye-bye.   “They were such a nice young couple, too.  Very odd how they packed up and left like that.  My Moses used to play with their little Jesus, you know.”  And life went on.  Until it didn’t.  Until that one day when the Roman soldiers showed up and inexplicably began going house to house searching for male infants and toddlers, and the screams of the children as they died blended with the screams of their parents as they tried to protect their precious little ones.  Not only Bethlehem, but the whole region, reeled in the blood reek.   

All parents at some time tell their children as they grow up that “life isn’t ‘fair’”, but when we adults face events such as Sandy Hook, when we consider the slaughter at Bethlehem, the words stick in our throat.  The world asks “Why???”, but since it addresses the question into a meaningless void, any answer it gets is equally meaningless.  Christians, too, ask, “Why?”, but since we address our question to the God of the universe, to our heavenly Father, to our loving and gracious Lord, to the One in Whom lies ALL meaning, one would think that the answer we get would be satisfying and complete.  One would think.  Yet in reality, especially for events like this, if we get an answer at all, that answer will be …..  insufficient. 

Oh, you can talk about God’s “permissive” will vs. His “directive” will.  You can talk about the “tapestry” He’s weaving and how He needs the different colors of threads to make the pattern.  You can talk about Joseph and how “you meant it for evil but God meant it for good.”  You can quote “God is too kind to be cruel and too wise to make a mistake.”   But for those in the midst of tragedy, none of these – all of these – are simply not enough. 

It’s not that there isn’t an explanation.  It’s not that there isn’t a “meaning”.  Any answer God can give us is insufficient because He is an infinite God, and we aren’t.  We can never hope to understand His thoughts, even if He were to tell them to us.  If we predicate our faith on understanding the “whys” of this life, we are doomed to disappointment.  The only thing that ultimately matters is “Who”.  When explanations fall short, as they invariably do, when the world makes no sense – and maybe faith and God the least sense of all – it all comes down to trust:  either we trust God or we don’t.  It’s as simple as that.  Simple – but not necessarily easy.

Some of the parents in Bethlehem undoubtedly railed at God, raising their fists against Him, “Why didn’t you protect my little one?”, seeing in the events evidence of His having abandoned His people.  Some probably tried to find some kind of explanation within themselves, “God must be punishing me for something.”  Some may have just decided that there was no God.  But some must have been of the faithful, of the Zechariahs and Elizabeths, the Josephs and Marys, of the Davids, of the Job who said, “The LORD has given, and the LORD has taken away.  Blessed be the Name of the LORD.”  That’s trust.

Trust doesn’t make loss hurt less.  It doesn’t make life be “fair”.  It doesn’t make the world make sense.  Trust looks life’s brutality square in the face, yet strengthens our hearts with the confidence that God’s reality is far greater than what we can see. 

Though we are as “Rachel weeping for her children, because they are not”, trust reminds us that I AM.