But They’re Children

Over the past two months, many Texans have been reeling in the aftermath of one of the most horrific disasters in recent memory. In July, after hours of torrential rains upstream, Central Texas’ Guadalupe River rose by over twenty feet in less than an hour, wiping away everything in its path – including Camp Mystic, a beloved, Christ-centered camp for girls. One hundred thirty-five people died, including thirty-seven children, twenty-four of whom were Camp Mystic campers.

I wish this was the only recent tragedy involving children, but last week in Minneapolis, a deeply disturbed young man fired over a hundred rounds through sanctuary windows as kids at a Catholic school gathered for mass. Two young children were killed and many others injured before the assailant turned the gun on himself.

Awful stories where children are victimized shake us like little else can. We can more easily rationalize tragedies involving adults, but what are we supposed to think whenever innocent kids are hurt or killed? As Christians, what are we supposed to say to people struggling to comprehend why a loving God would allow such horrific things to happen to children?

What hope can followers of Jesus offer to people who are reeling at a time like this? If you feel like you’re walking in darkness in the aftermath of these unimaginable atrocities, or if you’re trying to support someone whose faith has been shaken, I hope you’ll keep these three biblical truths in mind.

1. Life is precious to God, and death is evil. 

Throughout his life on earth, Jesus was no stranger to death. When he was told that his cousin and best friend, John the Baptist, had been savagely beheaded, Jesus retreated into solitude.

And after his close friend Lazarus died, Jesus tried to comfort Martha and Mary, the sisters of the deceased, but when he saw the depth of their grief, he lost it:

Jesus’ deep sorrow is even more remarkable when you remember that he had every intention of miraculously raising Lazarus from the dead, which he did just moments later. This raises the question:

If Jesus knew he was about to bring Lazarus back to life, why was he moved to tears by Lazarus’ death? 

The only answer that makes sense is that human death was never part of God’s plan. Death breaks God’s heart just like it breaks ours.

Christians understand death to be a consequence of humanity’s rebellion against God, orchestrated by Satan in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). But life comes from God, and every human life is precious to Him. That’s why, throughout the Bible, death is described as the enemy of God and His people. Consider how Jesus sought to comfort Martha after her brother died:

And look how the book of Revelation describes Jesus’ ultimate mission on earth:

People who are grieving and shaken by recent tragedies involving children need to know that death was never part of God’s perfect plan and that He has declared all-out war on death. Most importantly, they need to know that our God will not stop until death itself is dead and buried. Jesus walked out of his tomb to remind us that, someday soon, we’ll walk out of ours!

2. God knows the pain of losing a child.

The God of the Bible is unique among all the world’s other gods, and nowhere is this more evident than when tragedy strikes. Consider how other major religions make sense of events like floods and mass shootings. Hinduism holds that a person’s suffering is the direct result of bad karma they accrued in a past life. Muslims believe that God sends tragic events our way to punish people’s sins or to teach them a lesson in obedience. Buddhism puts forth the idea that it’s up to each individual to transcend their suffering through right understanding, right intention, right effort/action, and right meditation/concentration, among other “right” deeds.

Only Christianity proclaims that suffering and tragic events are not part of God’s perfect will and that, because of His love and compassion for us, God chose to suffer as one of us through the life and death of Jesus. It’s a stunning idea when you think about it: the all-powerful Creator of the universe left His heavenly throne to show the world that He is willing to suffer with us – and for us. 

What’s even more amazing – especially in light of recent tragedies involving children – is how our God is uniquely able to empathize with those who are hurting most: parents who have lost a child. The Bible tells the story of a heavenly Father whose Son left home for a time, only to die a horrific death that He didn’t deserve.

I’ve spoken by phone with several parents who lost their daughters in the Camp Mystic flood, and one father (we’ll call him Ryan) told me how brutal it’s been for him to imagine his baby girl crying out for her daddy as the waters rose around her. As I stumbled for the right words to comfort Ryan, I realized I had nothing to offer him. How could someone like me – who has never lost a child – possibly understand what he is going through? 

Then I remembered the cross. As Jesus suffered and cried out, one of his last words was “father” (Luke 23:46). Jesus cried out for his dad as he died, a heartbreaking plea that his Father no doubt could hear. As I spoke with Ryan, I realized it wasn’t up to me to come up with the right words of comfort; I only needed to remind him that God is a Father who knows what it feels like to lose a child.

A few days later, Ryan sent me the following text:

Our God isn’t distant or indifferent when we’re in the worst kind of pain. He knows exactly how it feels. Maybe that’s why the Bible insists that:

3. Death is temporary, but life is forever.

When I was a kid, I thought life was forever. No one close to me died when I was little, so it never occurred to me that I, along with my parents, my sister, and all my friends would die one day.

My parents did all they could to shield me from the painful finality of death. When my beloved weiner dog, Noodle, was run over by the ice cream truck, my dad loaded his long, lifeless body into our station wagon and drove him away. A few hours later, dad returned with “Noodle #2” – a younger, less run-over version of Noodle, and our whole family just pretended like nothing ever happened, reinforcing in my young mind the idea that death may come and go, but life goes on forever.

But as we grow up, this life has a way of teaching us about the brutal reality of death. When my childhood friend, Philip, died in a car accident at sixteen years of age, I remember feeling the weight of death for the first time. Since then, that same helpless feeling has come over me every time I’ve lost loved ones, including two summers ago when my mother passed away.

Because our perspective is so limited by what we know about life on earth, we can easily forget how much we don’t yet know. One way this happens is that, as we grow into adulthood, we become convinced that life is temporary and death is forever. We say things like, “Life is short,” and we think of death as though it’s the last word.

The Bible emphatically and repeatedly declares otherwise. According to Scripture, death is short. 

All we need is to shift our perspective away from a limited, earthly vantage point toward heaven’s point of view. As the Apostle Paul wrote:

I am confident that each and every Camp Mystic camper who died in July is now fully alive, and that they all know something that most of us have forgotten: death is only temporary, but life never ends. Their parents, friends, and loved ones need to know that they haven’t seen these girls for the last time. All the best memories they have of the love, joy, and laughter they shared with those children will one day be surpassed by the hugs, kisses, songs, and laughter that await them in eternity.

One day, we’ll see for ourselves how foolish we were to accept the notion that life is short and death is permanent, and we’ll discover how right we were when, in the innocence of our childhood, we knew that life is forever. Maybe that’s why Jesus said,

I pray that God will give us all childlike hearts and minds so that we might trust Him more, especially in difficult times like these.