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A Response to Tragedy at The Covenant School
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Connected by scripture or shared themes.
A Response to Tragedy at The Covenant School
Continue exploring
Connected by scripture or shared themes.
Good morning. This has been a devastating week in our city. This is our first Sunday gathering since the senseless act of violence at the Covenant School that took seven lives. As this week has progressed, it's become clear that if you've lived here for any significant time, you likely have a direct connection to one of the people who died.
Many of you are carrying different emotions today—sadness, confusion, anger, fear, anxiety, or numbness. You are welcome to show up authentically. The Psalms are filled with songs of both joy and lament. As we grapple to understand all of this, we gather to worship—on the mountaintop and in the valley.
We're gathered on Palm Sunday, which begins Passion Week—the most important seven days in the Christian faith. This coming Friday, we'll have Good Friday services where we focus on the price that was paid. It's hard to fully celebrate the Resurrection until you've lived in the weight and pain and grief of what was paid for us.
A few weeks ago, I shared about Jesus visiting Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Soon after, Lazarus became ill and died. His sisters were devastated. When Jesus finally arrived, Mary fell at His feet and cried out: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
Last week was a senseless act of evil. The question of why is legitimate. But it's a question we will not get a satisfactory answer to this side of eternity.
We know we live in a fallen world, a world of sin and evil. We're reminded in moments like this that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world, and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. It is hard to make sense of tragedies like this. They freshly remind us of our vulnerability and the illusion of control we think we have.
What does Jesus do in response? In John 11, we read: "When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled." And then: Jesus wept.
The first thing I notice is that God welcomes our confusion, protests, frustrations, anger, and fears. The book of Psalms—our book of prayers—falls into three categories: praise, thanksgiving, and lament. The largest category is lament.
Psalm 13 says: "How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?"
Psalm 142 says: "I cry aloud to the Lord; I lift my voice to the Lord for mercy. I pour out before him my complaint; before him I tell my trouble."
God welcomes our honest, authentic, real confusion and frustrations and anger. If you're feeling any of these things, I encourage you to bring that before God in prayer.
The other response of Jesus in this moment is that He joins His friends in hot, felt grief. He is deeply moved, greatly troubled. Jesus wept.
Psalm 34 reminds us: The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.
Romans 12 instructs us: Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. And do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
We are a city mourning. We are people grieving. But we generally have an underdeveloped theology of grief. We don't practice grief well. We skip over the sadness of Good Friday and rush to the victory of Easter Sunday. We don't like to feel sad, so many of us have limited capacity for healthy biblical grief. We know how to celebrate, but we don't always know what it means to grieve.
This is partly why we even call funerals "celebrations of life." But we need to grow our capacity to grieve well.
1 Thessalonians 4 reminds us: We grieve, but with hope.
Most of us experienced what happened this week through media. Jenny Black, a licensed marriage and family therapist and media trauma expert, shared important research from 2013 about the Boston Marathon bombing. Research showed that people watching trauma through screens were actually more traumatized than people who were at the bombing.
Over the past ten years, we've seen so much traumatic content on our screens—globally, nationally, in our communities, even in our circles of friends. This is called vicarious trauma. We didn't experience the trauma ourselves, but we internalize it.
The paradox is this: while it might seem that your problems don't matter in light of this tragedy, the reality is that those who watch trauma carry more burden than those who experience it directly. Those who were there have context, purpose, meaning, and agency. When we're watching, we don't have that, and then we scroll to the next tragedy.
Before Monday, we weren't okay collectively. We've been broken down by constant traumatic content. And now this tragedy hits so close to home. We didn't have the normal capacity of a healthy community to help because we've been so depleted.
You have permission to stop watching. You don't have to consume more media about this. You can help our community by taking care of yourself and your family.
Mr. Rogers said to look for the helpers in tragedy. When we're watching through our screens, we can't see the helpers. And you can't be a helper if you are traumatized. If you were not directly affected, you have a choice about how much to make this your trauma. You're in a position to help support a community. We need to manage our own exposure so we can be in a position of greater mental health to provide help to those genuinely in the middle of it.
When we face something horrific, we're flooded with adrenaline and cortisol. Our blood moves from our core to our extremities—our feet and hands. God designed us this way so we can fight or flee. But when we're at home on the couch or at our desk, we have nothing to do with what's happening in our bodies, and we lose access to our best problem-solving skills.
This is not the time to make major life decisions about moving, changing schools, or other long-term changes. Wait until your system can regulate and your best thinking returns.
Here are five practical ways to process what we've been through:
1. Walk or Run
Trauma energy is stored in our cells and must be released. Move your body. Go on a trail and jog with earbuds in, sing worship at the top of your lungs. You are catharting and discharging the energy, gaining a sense of strength instead of helplessness.
2. Talk
If it's mentionable, it's manageable. If we can say it out loud, we can find a way through it together. Everything you're feeling is valid and deserves to be witnessed by someone else.
3. Write
Journaling has a special healing quality. If you don't know where to start, write: "I want... I feel... I need..." You might write to God your questions: "God, where are you in this?" You might write a letter to the families who lost a loved one. You may send it or not, but write it.
4. Draw
Sometimes there aren't words. The heavier and bigger the trauma, the fewer words necessary. Outline your body on paper and draw where you feel the grief. What color is it? How heavy? How much space does it take up? If it had a sound and temperature, what would they be?
5. Create a Container
You can't carry this around 24 hours a day and function for your family and work. Think of a container that could hold the bigness of this. What would it be made of? How large? Where could you store it? Imagine dumping all your thoughts and feelings into it, storing it in that place, and accessing it when it's helpful. It doesn't have to be open and exposed all the time.
Grief can feel nebulous. You might wonder: Am I grieving? What does that look like? How do I know if I'm doing it right?
Try this: Give your grief 15 minutes of floor time each day. Set aside 15 minutes to just be with your grief. Just as parents do 15 minutes of floor time with young children—getting on the floor with them, doing what they're doing without parenting or coaching—give your grief that same attention.
Otherwise, grief feels like a toddler yanking at your pants demanding attention, or something chasing you from behind. If you designate specific space and time for your grief, it won't feel like it consumes you.
If you have school-aged children, these conversations are important. Help them understand that grief and loss can be talked about and managed.
Use these four guiding questions:
1. Where were you when you first heard the news? This helps start the story.
2. What troubles you the most about what happened? This surfaces their concerns.
3. What are your fears going forward? This identifies what worries them.
4. What supports you? What could bring a sense of safety or comfort? This points toward resources.
These conversations will look different for elementary, middle, and high school children, but the goal is the same: walk through grief together so it's not alone and can be contained.
Many traditions around the world do grief much better than we do. One key thing: parents need to model grief for their children. Don't suppress your feelings. Show your sadness. Say, "That was really overwhelming," or "That brought up a painful memory for me." Then model how you resolve those feelings: "I think I'm going to take a walk."
Model both the expression of feelings and ways to bring them into a more organized place. Yes, do this with boundary and control, but this is an opportunity to show your children how to process difficult emotions.
It's natural for children to ask, "Could this happen at my school?" The answer is: Yes, difficult things can happen. That's scary and normal to wonder about. Normalize and validate the question. Life can change very quickly, and that is frightening.
There's much to be done, and important conversations to have. But one thing you can do, in addition to grieving well and leading your family to grieve well, is show love to our educators and first responders.
Thank your school teachers. They give their lives to educating our children. It's a noble calling to pour into the next generation. Acknowledge this work and your gratitude.
Thank our police and first responders. Smile at officers—they don't get smiled at often. You can:
The final thought I want to leave you with comes from the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:
Praise be to the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
For Christians, there is a resource of comfort that God wants to deposit in you for a very specific reason. He is wanting to comfort you so that you can deploy that comfort to someone who is in need. The comfort is given to you so it can be given to someone else.
God wants to use you this week to receive a heavenly resource of comfort and enable you to turn that toward someone who is hurting.
We grieve, but we do not grieve without hope. That's because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which we remember as we gather around the communion table.
On the night Jesus was betrayed, He gathered with His friends. He took bread and said: "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this to remember me."
In the same way, Jesus took the cup and said: "This cup is the new covenant between God and His people, an agreement confirmed with my blood, poured out as a sacrifice."
As we close, know that we invite the comfort God wants to give you. And I pray that you will look around this week for someone who is hurting, someone in need, and pass on that resource of comfort. May we be people who learn to grieve well, who serve those genuinely in need, and who receive and give the comfort of God.
Good morning. This has been a devastating week in our city. This is our first Sunday gathering since the senseless act of violence at the Covenant School that took seven lives. As this week has progressed, it's become clear that if you've lived here for any significant time, you likely have a direct connection to one of the people who died.
Many of you are carrying different emotions today—sadness, confusion, anger, fear, anxiety, or numbness. You are welcome to show up authentically. The Psalms are filled with songs of both joy and lament. As we grapple to understand all of this, we gather to worship—on the mountaintop and in the valley.
We're gathered on Palm Sunday, which begins Passion Week—the most important seven days in the Christian faith. This coming Friday, we'll have Good Friday services where we focus on the price that was paid. It's hard to fully celebrate the Resurrection until you've lived in the weight and pain and grief of what was paid for us.
A few weeks ago, I shared about Jesus visiting Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Soon after, Lazarus became ill and died. His sisters were devastated. When Jesus finally arrived, Mary fell at His feet and cried out: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
Last week was a senseless act of evil. The question of why is legitimate. But it's a question we will not get a satisfactory answer to this side of eternity.
We know we live in a fallen world, a world of sin and evil. We're reminded in moments like this that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world, and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. It is hard to make sense of tragedies like this. They freshly remind us of our vulnerability and the illusion of control we think we have.
What does Jesus do in response? In John 11, we read: "When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled." And then: Jesus wept.
The first thing I notice is that God welcomes our confusion, protests, frustrations, anger, and fears. The book of Psalms—our book of prayers—falls into three categories: praise, thanksgiving, and lament. The largest category is lament.
Psalm 13 says: "How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?"
Psalm 142 says: "I cry aloud to the Lord; I lift my voice to the Lord for mercy. I pour out before him my complaint; before him I tell my trouble."
God welcomes our honest, authentic, real confusion and frustrations and anger. If you're feeling any of these things, I encourage you to bring that before God in prayer.
The other response of Jesus in this moment is that He joins His friends in hot, felt grief. He is deeply moved, greatly troubled. Jesus wept.
Psalm 34 reminds us: The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.
Romans 12 instructs us: Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. And do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
We are a city mourning. We are people grieving. But we generally have an underdeveloped theology of grief. We don't practice grief well. We skip over the sadness of Good Friday and rush to the victory of Easter Sunday. We don't like to feel sad, so many of us have limited capacity for healthy biblical grief. We know how to celebrate, but we don't always know what it means to grieve.
This is partly why we even call funerals "celebrations of life." But we need to grow our capacity to grieve well.
1 Thessalonians 4 reminds us: We grieve, but with hope.
Most of us experienced what happened this week through media. Jenny Black, a licensed marriage and family therapist and media trauma expert, shared important research from 2013 about the Boston Marathon bombing. Research showed that people watching trauma through screens were actually more traumatized than people who were at the bombing.
Over the past ten years, we've seen so much traumatic content on our screens—globally, nationally, in our communities, even in our circles of friends. This is called vicarious trauma. We didn't experience the trauma ourselves, but we internalize it.
The paradox is this: while it might seem that your problems don't matter in light of this tragedy, the reality is that those who watch trauma carry more burden than those who experience it directly. Those who were there have context, purpose, meaning, and agency. When we're watching, we don't have that, and then we scroll to the next tragedy.
Before Monday, we weren't okay collectively. We've been broken down by constant traumatic content. And now this tragedy hits so close to home. We didn't have the normal capacity of a healthy community to help because we've been so depleted.
You have permission to stop watching. You don't have to consume more media about this. You can help our community by taking care of yourself and your family.
Mr. Rogers said to look for the helpers in tragedy. When we're watching through our screens, we can't see the helpers. And you can't be a helper if you are traumatized. If you were not directly affected, you have a choice about how much to make this your trauma. You're in a position to help support a community. We need to manage our own exposure so we can be in a position of greater mental health to provide help to those genuinely in the middle of it.
When we face something horrific, we're flooded with adrenaline and cortisol. Our blood moves from our core to our extremities—our feet and hands. God designed us this way so we can fight or flee. But when we're at home on the couch or at our desk, we have nothing to do with what's happening in our bodies, and we lose access to our best problem-solving skills.
This is not the time to make major life decisions about moving, changing schools, or other long-term changes. Wait until your system can regulate and your best thinking returns.
Here are five practical ways to process what we've been through:
1. Walk or Run
Trauma energy is stored in our cells and must be released. Move your body. Go on a trail and jog with earbuds in, sing worship at the top of your lungs. You are catharting and discharging the energy, gaining a sense of strength instead of helplessness.
2. Talk
If it's mentionable, it's manageable. If we can say it out loud, we can find a way through it together. Everything you're feeling is valid and deserves to be witnessed by someone else.
3. Write
Journaling has a special healing quality. If you don't know where to start, write: "I want... I feel... I need..." You might write to God your questions: "God, where are you in this?" You might write a letter to the families who lost a loved one. You may send it or not, but write it.
4. Draw
Sometimes there aren't words. The heavier and bigger the trauma, the fewer words necessary. Outline your body on paper and draw where you feel the grief. What color is it? How heavy? How much space does it take up? If it had a sound and temperature, what would they be?
5. Create a Container
You can't carry this around 24 hours a day and function for your family and work. Think of a container that could hold the bigness of this. What would it be made of? How large? Where could you store it? Imagine dumping all your thoughts and feelings into it, storing it in that place, and accessing it when it's helpful. It doesn't have to be open and exposed all the time.
Grief can feel nebulous. You might wonder: Am I grieving? What does that look like? How do I know if I'm doing it right?
Try this: Give your grief 15 minutes of floor time each day. Set aside 15 minutes to just be with your grief. Just as parents do 15 minutes of floor time with young children—getting on the floor with them, doing what they're doing without parenting or coaching—give your grief that same attention.
Otherwise, grief feels like a toddler yanking at your pants demanding attention, or something chasing you from behind. If you designate specific space and time for your grief, it won't feel like it consumes you.
If you have school-aged children, these conversations are important. Help them understand that grief and loss can be talked about and managed.
Use these four guiding questions:
1. Where were you when you first heard the news? This helps start the story.
2. What troubles you the most about what happened? This surfaces their concerns.
3. What are your fears going forward? This identifies what worries them.
4. What supports you? What could bring a sense of safety or comfort? This points toward resources.
These conversations will look different for elementary, middle, and high school children, but the goal is the same: walk through grief together so it's not alone and can be contained.
Many traditions around the world do grief much better than we do. One key thing: parents need to model grief for their children. Don't suppress your feelings. Show your sadness. Say, "That was really overwhelming," or "That brought up a painful memory for me." Then model how you resolve those feelings: "I think I'm going to take a walk."
Model both the expression of feelings and ways to bring them into a more organized place. Yes, do this with boundary and control, but this is an opportunity to show your children how to process difficult emotions.
It's natural for children to ask, "Could this happen at my school?" The answer is: Yes, difficult things can happen. That's scary and normal to wonder about. Normalize and validate the question. Life can change very quickly, and that is frightening.
There's much to be done, and important conversations to have. But one thing you can do, in addition to grieving well and leading your family to grieve well, is show love to our educators and first responders.
Thank your school teachers. They give their lives to educating our children. It's a noble calling to pour into the next generation. Acknowledge this work and your gratitude.
Thank our police and first responders. Smile at officers—they don't get smiled at often. You can:
The final thought I want to leave you with comes from the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:
Praise be to the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
For Christians, there is a resource of comfort that God wants to deposit in you for a very specific reason. He is wanting to comfort you so that you can deploy that comfort to someone who is in need. The comfort is given to you so it can be given to someone else.
God wants to use you this week to receive a heavenly resource of comfort and enable you to turn that toward someone who is hurting.
We grieve, but we do not grieve without hope. That's because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which we remember as we gather around the communion table.
On the night Jesus was betrayed, He gathered with His friends. He took bread and said: "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this to remember me."
In the same way, Jesus took the cup and said: "This cup is the new covenant between God and His people, an agreement confirmed with my blood, poured out as a sacrifice."
As we close, know that we invite the comfort God wants to give you. And I pray that you will look around this week for someone who is hurting, someone in need, and pass on that resource of comfort. May we be people who learn to grieve well, who serve those genuinely in need, and who receive and give the comfort of God.
