This is from this week's collection of postcards from the online community PostSecret. [Check out this post from the Duke Divinity blog Confessio on PostSecret coming to campus.] The moment I saw it, I knew I was going to blog about it.
Unfortunately, I have seen and heard about many instances of people, especially Christians, saying incredibly insensitive things out of good intentions in tragic circumstances. Cliches like "it was her time," "he's in a better place," "it was God's will" and more can be heard at just about any funeral. And although the gesture may be appreciated, it is often drowned in the patronizing character of such sayings, unintended though it may be. Sure, maybe he is in a better place; but his wife, his children, his friends--they want him here.
To say something like "it was God's will" really comforting, or is it a feeble attempt at explaining the unexplainable? We are constantly looking for a "reason" for events big and small in our lives and in the world. But sometimes the reason is something simple and obvious, not metaphysical at all, and sometimes the reality of cancer, an accident or other sudden death is too hard to bear, and so we pan it off on God.
I've been thinking a lot about Molly McKay lately. We're just a few weeks shy of marking 10 years to the day that she's been dead. Molly was a UNC student who spent her last summer among us volunteering with the youth group at Davidson United Methodist Church, where I was in the middle school group at the time. I remember being in the carpool line to school when my dad got the call that she had been killed in a head-on collision with a car that had crossed the median on the highway. Molly was on her way back to school and had just stopped by his office to tell him goodbye.
Not long after Molly's death, I remember my mom asking me if I thought God had taken Molly away. I pondered the question for a moment, then responded, "No. I don't think he took her. But I believe he welcomed her." I know what "took" Molly--a terrible accident that could not have been foreseen and from which her family will never fully recover. The God in whom I believe does not snatch beautiful, intelligent, selfless young women away at random simply because his will so dictates.
Of course, God being God, Molly's life has left an indelible mark on the lives of many and continues to do so even for young people who never knew her. The Molly McKay Youth House at Davidson UMC is tangible proof of that, as is a scholarship at UNC established in her memory. God's redemptive power runs strong and deep, but the fact that good came out of Molly's death does not in any way diminish its tragedy. If anyone dared then or dares now to tell the McKays that her death was God's will, I don't want to know about it.
In the face of tragedy, no one knows what to say. There are no magical words to make things better, and oftentimes if we feel ourselves saying something, we realize it's more intended to soothe our own sense of helplessness than to comfort the other, even if that wasn't our intention.
So what can we do? Psalm 46:10 comes to mind: "Be still, and know that I am God." The person who wrote that postcard appreciated the sympathy, but not the patronizing rationalizing of whatever they're going through. To simply be still with another person, to face the void of helplessness and to admit that nothing you can say or do will make it better--that may be one of the most difficult tasks there is, at least for me. Be still. Know that God is there, somewhere, somehow.
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