The tragedy that hit the campus at Virginia Tech yesterday strikes us all in differing ways. We all have concern, compassion, questions, amazement, frustration, and a hundred other emotions; all directed toward God at a time like this. Three things that I wanted to share regarding this incident that will help us to possibly better be prepared to minister to those who go through unexplainable hurt around us. I find great Providence in the fact that just last week Dr. Dobson re-aired is 4 part series on "When God Doesn't Make Sense". This is one of those times we ask how could a loving God allow this to happen. He brings the points home better than I ever could. Check out his podcast at iTunes for free to listen to the series.
The second thing is a prayer that was posted here, on another blog with some responses. Concise but fitting.
Heavenly Father,
Our heart breaks for all the victims and families involved in the tragedy. We pray that You will make Yourself known to all who are grieving. May your presence comfort those who mourn. We pray for the leaders of the school, the police, the doctors, the students, the wounded, the community, and the extended family members. God use the churches and believers to somehow minister to all the broken people. We pray that people would turn to you, oh God. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
The final direction is how can you practically help someone who is hurting; whether from this event or another that life has thrown them. Below are 21 suggestions. If you want more detail and Scripture to accompany these, go HERE
1. Pray. Ask God for his help for you and for those you want to minister to. Ask him for wisdom and compassion and strength and a word fitly chosen. Ask that those who are suffering would look to God as their help and hope and healing and strength. Ask that he would make your mouth a fountain of life.
2. Feel and express empathy with those most hurt by this great evil and loss; weep with those who weep.
3. Feel and express compassion because of the tragic circumstances of so many loved ones and friends who have lost more than they could ever estimate.
4. Take time and touch, if you can, and give tender care to the wounded in body and soul.
5. Hold out the promise that God will sustain and help those who cast themselves on him for mercy and trust in his grace. He will strengthen you for the impossible days ahead in spite of all darkness.
6. Affirm that Jesus Christ tasted hostility from men and knew what it was to be unjustly tortured and abandoned, and to endure overwhelming loss, and then be killed, so that he is now a sympathetic mediator for us with God.
7. Declare that this murder was a great evil, and that God's wrath is greatly kindled by the wanton destruction of human life created in his image.
8. Acknowledge that God has permitted a great outbreak of sin against his revealed will, and that we do not know all the reasons why he would permit such a thing now, when it was in his power to stop it.
9. Express the truth that Satan is a massive reality in the universe that conspires with our own sin and flesh and the world to hurt people and to move people to hurt others, but stress that Satan is within and under the control of God.
10. Express that these terrorists rebelled against the revealed will of God and did not love God or trust him or find in God their refuge and strength and treasure, but scorned his ways and his Person.
11. Since rebellion against God was at the root of this act of murder, let us all fear such rebellion in our own hearts, and turn from it, and embrace the grace of God in Christ, and renounce the very impulses that caused this tragedy.
12. Point the living to the momentous issues of sin and repentance in our own hearts and the urgent need to get right with God through his merciful provision of forgiveness in Christ, so that a worse fate than death will not overtake us.
13. Remember that even those who trust in Christ may be cut down like these thousands who were in New York and Washington, but that does not mean they have been abandoned by God or not loved by God even in those agonizing hours of suffering. God's love conquers even through calamity.
14. Mingle heart-wrenching weeping with unbreakable confidence in the goodness and sovereignty of God who rules over and through the sin and the plans of rebellious people.
15. Trust God for his ability to do the humanly impossible, and bring you through this nightmare and, in some inscrutable way, bring good out of it.
16. Explain, when the time is right, and they have the wherewithal to think clearly that one of the mysteries of God's greatness is that he ordains that some things come to pass which he forbids and disapproves of.
17. Express your personal cherishing of the sovereignty of God as the ground of all your hope as you face the human impossibilities of life. The very fulfillment of the New Covenant promises of our salvation and preservation hang on God's sovereignty over rebellious human wills.
18. Count God your only lasting treasure, because he is the only sure and stable thing in the universe.
19. Remind everyone that to live is Christ and to die is gain.
20. Pray that God would incline their hearts to his word, open their eyes to his wonders, unite their hearts to fear him, and satisfy them with his love.
21. At the right time sound the trumpet that all this good news is meant by God to free us for radical, sacrificial service for the salvation of men and the glory of Christ. Help them see that one message of all this misery is to show us that life is short and fragile and followed by eternity, and small, man-centered ambitions are tragic.
Who in your world is hurting and in need of God's touch?
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