Today, the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions...
-Charles Steger (President of Virginia Tech)


Yesterday, Thirty-three people died on the campus of Virginia Tech. In a bizarre, unexplainable turn of events a gunman walked first into a dorm and then class rooms and began opening fire. Witnesses described his demeanor as "cold" and "emotionless". With what seems to be no motive the gunman shot and killed 32 people before turning the gun on himself.

When hearing a story like this there are loads of emotions that rise to the surface. Anger, confusion, bitterness, sympathy and even in a strange way relief that it wasn't someone you know. We are simultaneously repulsed yet enthralled by the drama that has occurred. We want to know why. Why someone would commit such a malicious crime? What could have set him off? What is happening to our world?

Prayerfully, this incident hasn't affected anyone reading this personally, but all of us have experienced something just as confusing. We have all come close to death at some point in our lives, maybe not ourselves but in someone close to us. A grand-parent, a sibling, a spouse or even a parent. All of us have come close to losing someone you care about and had to wrestle with the timeless questions of why.


He has set eternity in the hearts of men...
-Ecclesiastes 3.11


We were created for something larger than these few years we have and when we come face to face with the cessation of that life something just doesn't feel right. We peer into a coffin and something inside of us just doesn't jive with it. We hear of stories of people dying by the dozens and other than the obvious (hatred, anger, malice) we can't put our finger on what's not right about it.

Our design was for something greater. We will never come to a place of comfort in these things because were not crafted for such frailty. Heaven, eternity and beauty is set deep in our bones and this world that is broken and hurting cannot speak the language we feel deep inside of us. Peace eludes us in this temporal world and is only found in those things that are eternal.

In a day when sadness comes into our living rooms through television cameras, or grief creeps through our computer screens as we look at footage of such a tragedy; let us remember that this life isn't the end, it is only the beginning. Death hasn't won anything; it has been conquered and is only the door-way into eternity. We were crafted for beauty and nothing can take that from us.

So no matter how dark this life may become (i.e. "in a fish") circumstance can not take what it has not given, and that is life, which is scribed deep in our beings by the hands of our creator God.


Breathe Deeply,
Pastor Chris