This morning, during school Mass at a Catholic church in Minneapolis, the unthinkable happened.
Children bowed their heads. A hymn was being sung. Some clutched rosaries. Others fidgeted in pews. Then the windows shattered. Bullets ripped through stained glass and soft flesh.
Two children, eight and ten, never made it home. Seventeen others were rushed away on stretchers. The shooter turned the gun on himself.
Now, the altar is stained. Candles burn next to crime tape. And parents stand on sidewalks holding photos, whispering names, waiting for a confirmation they pray never comes.
If there is a God, why? Why here? Why them? Why again?
The World Offers Answers. They Fall Apart.
When horror unfolds, the world searches for meaning. But the explanations so often offered feel thin beside fresh graves.
Some say pain isn’t real. That it’s a trick of the mind. Just illusion. But Scripture will have none of that. Jesus doesn’t pretend pain is fake. He walked straight into it. He wept at a tomb. He cried out in thirst. He bled in public. The Bible is soaked in tears and sweat and bruises. It speaks plainly. Pain is real.
Others offer the stoic’s path. Don’t get worked up. Keep your chin up. What happens, happens. Harden yourself and carry on. But God never praises numbness. Jeremiah didn’t write stoic poetry after Jerusalem burned. He howled. He broke down. Jesus Himself cried out loud over the death of a friend.
Then there is the path of distraction. If you hurt, escape. Pour another drink. Take another pill. Watch another show. Go somewhere sunny and pretend this world doesn’t break. But when the lights go off and the high fades, the ache only grows. The Bible doesn’t offer escape. It offers presence. Not numbness, but a hand in the dark.
And some choose despair. They believe there’s no point to any of it. Life is random. Children die because nothing matters. But your tears tell you differently. So does your love. And so does the God of the Bible, who says you are not an accident. You were created with care. You are known, seen, held.
What God Actually Says
When events like today happen, we do not need speculation. We need truth.
Scripture tells us that suffering was never part of God’s original world. In Eden, there were no funerals. No shootings. No broken bodies on a sanctuary floor. Suffering began when sin entered, and it will end when sin is finally cast out. Pain is not native to the world God made. It is a parasite that will one day be pulled up by the roots.
But suffering in this life does not always match up with a person’s sin. Jesus said that clearly. The blind man wasn’t blind because he did something wrong. Job didn’t lose his children because he failed. Some of the most faithful people in history have suffered the most. We must never assume that tragedy is a sign of divine punishment. It may be many things. But it is not always that.
Still, when we see tragedy, we ask the wrong question. We ask, Why them? Why those children? Why that church? But Jesus turned the question around. He asked, Why not you? He said it not to condemn, but to shake us awake. Every breath we take is mercy. Every safe mile driven, every day a child returns from school, every Sunday service without a siren is undeserved grace.
There are things God has not explained. He never told Job why the winds came or why the boils rose or why the graves filled so fast. Instead, He showed Job Himself. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Can you tell the lightning where to go? Do you give the horse its strength? In the face of such majesty, Job stopped asking. Not because he got all the answers, but because he met the One who holds them.
Even so, the pain is real. And God calls His people not to solve the problem, but to serve the sufferers. Feed the hungry. Hold the grieving. Visit the sick. Wrap arms around the ones who cannot stand. The church does not exist to explain tragedy. The church exists to walk through it with others.
And we should not be surprised when the world hates this path. Christians often suffer more, not less. Jesus told us plainly. If the world hated Him, it would hate us. But the furnace does not destroy the gold. It purifies it. Our trials prepare us for glory. They make us long for a world no bullet can enter.
And above all this, we remember something staggering. That salvation itself came through suffering. The One who could have stopped every bullet chose instead to be pierced. The One who made the tree chose to hang on it. Jesus was not spared. He suffered for us, so that one day, we would never suffer again.
So What Now?
Tonight, the world does not need more arguments. It needs the church to weep. To whisper hope. To listen. To stand beside the ones who cannot rise.
If you are a parent who will go home tonight without your child, there is no sentence that can explain that grief. I will not insult you by trying. But I will say this. Jesus sees. He knows. He is not far.
If you are a child who sat in that sanctuary and heard your friend scream, He hears you still. And He will never leave you.
And if you are numb, angry, or trembling, Christ welcomes even that. Bring your rage. Bring your silence. Bring the ache you cannot name.
He is strong enough to carry it all.
A Prayer for the Broken
O God,
We do not ask You to explain. We ask You to stay near.
For the children who will wake tonight in hospital beds, for the parents who will not sleep at all, for the church trying to make sense of shattered windows and broken faith, we ask for Your presence.
Hold them. Help them. We have no other hope but You.
We pray in the name of Jesus, who suffered, who sees, and who will return.
Amen.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more…”
—Revelation 21:4
Well said. Thanks for this thoughtful post on a tragic moment.