There are moments in the life of a community when words feel painfully small.  A tragedy—particularly one involving a child—does not just break our hearts; it also unsettles our faith. 

The death of the nine-year-old at the Winthrop Elementary School last week when a tree fell on the school playground raises raw, urgent questions of faith: 

If you’ve found yourself asking questions like these, you are not alone.  In fact, you are standing in a long, faithful tradition.  Scripture is filled with people who dared to bring their hardest questions to God. 

The psalmists cry out, “How long, O Lord?”  The prophets lament injustice and suffering.  Even Jesus, from the cross, voices the anguished question, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

These questions are not a failure of faith.  They are an expression of it.

When hardship comes, it can be tempting to reach for easy answers.  We may try to explain tragedy in a way that makes it feel manageable.  But most of us know, deep down, that simple explanations don’t hold water. 

That’s because tragedy rarely makes sense.  It is not part of some neat, prearranged plan.  It is not something God “needed” to happen.  To suggest otherwise can deepen wounds rather than heal them.

Instead, our faith points us in a different direction.

We believe in a God who does not stand at a distance from suffering, but who enters into it.  We believe in a God who, in Jesus, knows grief, loss, and even death.  This means that when tragedy strikes, God is not the cause of our pain but God walks with us through even the darkest of valleys.

God is with the grieving family, holding them in love when words fail.  God is with friends and classmates, sitting quietly in their confusion and sorrow.  God is with all of us in that heavy place where sadness lives.

And if God is present in suffering, then so is God’s call to us.

In the face of tragedy, we are invited to become bearers of God’s presence for one another.  We are available to each other.  We extend kindness more freely, patience more generously, and compassion more deeply.

This is not a way of explaining tragedy because there is no good explanation.  It is a way of responding to it.

Hope, in moments like these, does not come from having all the answers.  Hope comes from knowing that love has not disappeared.  It comes from seeing care shared, burdens lifted, and community strengthened even in sorrow.  It comes from trusting that grief is not the end of the story.

Healing, of course, does not happen all at once.  It comes slowly and unevenly.  Some days will feel fine.  Other days will be heavy indeed.  As with any loss, there is no “right” way to grieve and no timetable for when sadness should pass.

But we do not walk this path alone.  We walk it together as a community led by the spirit of God.  So, even as we make room for grief, may we also trust that, even in small ways, love is still at work among us.  

Because it is and it always will be.