Wisdom through the awful grace of God

“A voice is heard in Ramah, Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted because they are no more.”

—Jeremiah 31

In 1959, a family of four was slain in Holcomb, Kansas. It is the essence of Truman Capote’s novel, In Cold Blood. The day-after-reaction of fear and apprehension that such events instill in towns, cities and nations, he describes this way:

“. . . strangers, ignorant of the local disaster, were startled by what they saw as they crossed the prairies and passed through Holcomb: windows ablaze, almost every window in almost every house, and, in the brightly lit rooms, fully clothed people, even entire families, who had sat the whole night wide awake, watchful, listening. Of what were they frightened? ‘It might happen again.’ ”

It did happen again. Robb Elementary in Uvalde. The unthinkable. The nightmare from which we cannot awake. When these tragedies happen, the deluge of news and its echoes seem to amplify the thunder in our ears and hearts. And when we turn off the news and seek solitude to reflect, there is only the silence of Heaven.

What can be done? I’m not sure. How is evil prevented? There is little a state can do regarding gun control while even a small number of leaders and law makers insist that guns are in no way related to gun violence.

Mental health assistance? There will never be enough. Who in this nation is not now in need of a mental adjustment. Even our legal system, paid for as it is, having done so little for so long is insanity in itself.

More police in schools? At least this is a more honest confession that we ourselves have lost control. We need strong arms for ours are weakened. “Somebody call the police!”

What can be said? A more pertinent question could be, Who is to say it? President? Governor? Politician? Activist? Preacher? Student? Parent?

That being addressed and asked, this column is not intended as political discourse. I would hope, and it is my best intention, to always devote this space to readers who seek, if not a word of encouragement and gospel, a sense of God.

However, sometimes immediate outrage and grief robs us of the inclination to even consider God. During one of my pastorates I went one morning to the home of an older couple whose grown son had taken his own life the day before while sitting under a tree with a shotgun. The father was sitting with his surviving son in the back yard. As I opened the gate and came into the yard, he commanded, “Don’t come over here; don’t talk to me, Pastor!”

On the night of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy spoke words of empathy to the American nation, quoting the Greek poet Aeschylus: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Aeschylus’ poem is enigmatic, and evidently so is God. John Boyle, Fourth Presbyterian, Chicago, agrees: “When it comes to God, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about God lies just beyond our grasp.”

But let me emphatically promise you that what happened was not the will of God. It was against our will and His. It is pain and it is despair. What wisdom we may gain from it and see in it only time will tell and God’s grace bestow. Amazing grace or awful grace, it is God’s grace. And God is good.