Monday is usually clean-up day for me. I’m finding my hymnal that I’ve left somewhere other than my desk, cleaning up the empty coffee cup and the ring it’s left. I’m assembling all the scraps of paper that include dates for my calendar, updates on the flock, prayers passed along in the hallway and changes to numbers or email addresses. Instead of tidying things up, my routine has been turned upside down – as has yours – yet one more time.
We closed Bible Study as we do on Mondays just before lunch only to hear of the shooting at Covenant Presbyterian School in Nashville. What has marked our Monday is this: the gathering of parents with their Covenant students, the gathering of our hearts, too, around the tragic news, and the gathering of information; the dissemination of answers for our questions as well as the dissemination of encouragement and the valuing of lives, especially those whom we love the most. All in light of the fact most of us thought it would never happen here.
Even as names and theories and projections are shared, my mind is holding on to these numbers:
14 14 minutes, less than half of a cartoon episode. That’s all it took for “the cavalry” to arrive in the form of first responders who reestablished safety for our children, their educators and friends. I am grateful for those who run to a neighbor instead of running away.
7 7 lives. Ended way earlier than we ever imagined. Three children who were 8 and 9 years of age; three adults committed to love children and tend their minds, hearts, and spirits. And, another daughter who decided that violence was an acceptable response to hurt others, maybe as he/she was hurting. Say their names, friends. Let their lives linger here the way they will in the presence of their Savior: Evelyn, Hallie, William, Cynthia, Katherine, and Mike.
Audrey, too.
2-3 That’s the percentage of shooters in ever-increasing incidents like these that are female. A rarity. All that means is that what sometimes helps us explain the inexplicable away doesn’t work in this situation. My spirit wants to scream “this is not who we were created to be, not one of us!” But, it certainly is what unhealed brokenness can make of any of us.
1 One focus. What is our contribution – yours and mine – toward the kind of healing of society that will make days like this Monday history? How will you and I love ourselves, our neighbors, and our God to the end that evil is defeated, that peace prevails, because love is the common commitment we all share.
There’s another level of sadness in me, an undertow below this newest wave of grief. Sadness from another Monday, 25 years ago, in West Paducah, Kentucky, when violence and brokenness and disruption and death punctuated what we really wanted to be routine. Church, we can do better. We MUST do better. I’m not saying that we as a community or any one of us as an individual is responsible for all this mess. However, our communities are counting, at least, on our diligence in prayer and love. God’s world needs us to remember who and Whose we are. For, we are children of the King of Kings, the Most High God. And, even on a Monday like today, the Kingdom of God is at hand.
Pastor Sandra
