When Tragedies Hit too Close to Home

Reporting on the President’s comments last night on the shooting, the New York Times reports, “With each massacre, his sense of powerless anger and frustration has built.” Left to our own devices, we will only end up distraught at our powerlessness. We were never meant to orchestrate history.

Few things about human nature are as predictable as our instinctive readiness to empathize with those who suffer, and perhaps the assurance that our “thoughts and prayers” are with the victims is the most common phrase used in this regard. But with the rise of the social media in recent years, this response to tragedy has increasingly come under attack from various individuals and publications in a world that is reeling with pain.

In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis, one of the most renowned Christian authors and thinkers, examines a universally applicable question within the human condition: “If God is good and all-powerful, why does he allow his creatures to suffer pain?” With his signature wealth of compassion and insight, C.S. Lewis offers answers to these crucial questions and shares his hope and wisdom to help heal a world hungering for a true understanding of human nature.

We will all experience tragedy at some point in our lives. Healing takes time, but it is a beautiful and necessary process. Learn healthy ways to move forward after tragedy from someone who walked this road before you.

Oklahoma City. Boston. Sandy Hook. Aurora. These tragedies cost many lives. In the aftermath of such devastating events, news services provide a glut of images and social media outlets overflow with negative posts, all focused on the shock and horror. Yet, through it all, a positive counterpoint emerges—the nation pulls together.

When tragedy hits your family, how do you help your children process their feelings and move forward?

Consider ways to come alongside kids who have faced a life-threatening situation that stems from the misguided actions of another person.

People often ask why God would let something so devastating happen. This article will help you with your grief, give parents tools to help their children cope, and show you how to help those in your community find a way to process what has happened.

One family shares their powerful story about overcoming tragedy.

Pain is what people protest. It is pain that people find so problematic. Though we might think we’re blaming God because God has power to stop things, the thing we want Him to stop is the insult of our pain.

Pastor Timothy Keller offers some perspective and hope for those times in life when trouble and hardship cause us to question our faith in God. (Part 1 of 2)

As 2012 drew to a close, I accepted perhaps the hardest assignment of all, not in terms of quantity of suffering — can it ever be quantified? — but in the sheer intensity of horror and intimate grief. The weekend after Christmas I addressed the community of Newtown, Connecticut, a town reeling from the senseless slaughter of 20 first-graders and six of their teachers and staff members.

People ask why God would let something so devastating happen. Parents struggle with answering their kids’ complex questions about fear and death issues and even with letting their kids go back to school.