A Somber Week...

This week — Holy Week — is filled with grief and sadness over the injustice carried out as Jesus was wrongful convicted and executed. So Holy Week is always a somber week, but the bombings in Brussels on Tuesday took this somber week to a different level for me.

On Tuesday, you couldn’t turn on the radio or TV or go online without being inundated by images and coverage of the three explosions detonated in the Belgian capital that killed at least 34 people and injured 100s more. When that kind of pain, suffering, injustice, and senseless killing of innocent people are on display right in front of your face, you can feel the shadow of darkness close in.

These attacks remind us that we live in a Good Friday world. It was on Good Friday over 2,000 years ago that so many people, who had found the hope and promise of a brighter and better world in Jesus, had their dreams crushed. Their hope was smothered as they watched the Messiah put to death on a cross.

In Mark’s Gospel we are told that darkness overshadowed the land from noon until 3 p.m. I feel like the world is once again under a cloud of darkness. Overcome with grief and fear, how will we respond? As followers of Jesus Christ — as people who have Easter hope, the hope of resurrection — how are we going to respond individually and as a community?

We can all shake our heads in disbelief and sorrow. We can pray for our brothers and sisters in Brussels. We can pray for comfort for all those who lost a neighbor, friend or family member. We can pray for peace, for healing for all those injured physically and psychologically. As we hear the stories and see the images through eyes filled with tears, we remember that our tears are joined with God’s, weeping for the brokenness and suffering in His world.

Then, I remember that Sunday is coming. I cling to my faith, knowing that on the third day Jesus rose from the dead. I hold on to the promise that evil and hate never have the final word. I know the resurrection is coming for us and for our world through Jesus Christ — love wins!