The choice of joy when tragedy happens

By sheer coincidence, I seem to have a habit of migrating toward places that are infamous for gun violence. I went to college in Kent, Ohio and live about an hour away from Chardon. I now live in Littleton, home of the Columbine shootings. And now, most recently, I learned that Newtown is just a short drive from where I spent the first six years of my life.

Like trying to peel your eyes away from a train wreck, I couldn't stop watching the coverage of the shooting, particularly the interview with Robbie Parker, father of six-year-old Emilie Parker, who was killed on Friday. I bawled watching it several times in a row, because while I'm not in any way envious of the suffering this man and his family are enduring, I am envious of his faith. Just a day after his daughter's death, he spoke at his church and said that he wasn't angry, and he even extended grace toward the family of the shooter. It seems clear that he refuses to wallow in pain, but is choosing to trust God with it instead.

I've read several blogs over the last couple days, attempting to answer the big "Why does God allow these things to happen?" question. Some answers are more satisfactory than others, but there's no way to fully answer that for sure (and this is coming from a seminary student!). But I will say this much: I know that God is good because of the way this man, a flawed, ordinary man, responded in the wake of every parent's worst nightmare. His response is not a typical human response. Because let's face it, bitterness is easy. It's expected. And certainly, it's understandable after a tragedy like this. But bitterness doesn't come from God, and if we are truly following him, I don't think he'll leave us to wallow in it forever.

If nothing else, this proves to me that the holy spirit is more powerful than we can know. You may say otherwise, and instead just call the man crazy or especially brave, but I don't think "brave" or even "exceedingly compassionate" are good descriptors. They just aren't big enough. I call myself a Christian and I believe in forgiveness, but if I was a parent of a murdered child, and the killer was still alive, I'd want nothing more than to hunt him down and kill him myself.

I don't see it much in the winter time because it's usually covered by a sock, but events like this make me remember why I got my "Choose Joy" tattoo. My circumstances at the time of getting it were completely different, but the point was to have a permanent reminder of the fact that true joy is something this world can't touch. It is not dependent on circumstances, it is not the same as "happiness," because joy is not an emotion. It's a deeply-rooted assurance that who we are and what we're made for does not change even if we're hurting, even if our possessions are taken away, even if our loved ones turn on us or are called to heaven sooner than we'd like. Joy, like love, endures all things. No kind of tragedy can touch it.

I love the interview with Robbie Parker, heartbreaking as it is, because it shows that the source of his hope is in something bigger than himself. We can put our hope in temporal things, and in other people, but the tragedy in Connecticut is a reminder that nothing, not even people, are permanent. We need to come to terms with the fact that nothing on this earth is fully guaranteed, nothing in life is guaranteed except God and his sovereignty.

There's much more I'd like to say about the nature of forgiveness, and my own muddled opinion on gun control, but that may be another blog. The latter subject has certainly been beaten to death several times over the last few days, so I may just leave that one to experts who are far more articulate than I.

What I really want to emphasize is this: faith is not something that you have when everything is going well in your life. When tragedies like this happen, faith is the rock that reminds you this pain is not wasted. Faith is what you have left when everything else we trust shows its lack of permanence.