sadness

"We just really knew him as the question mark kid."

This quote describing the relationship between Monday's gunman and his peers has troubled me in particular.

I was driving from Staunton to Atlanta when this was happening--drove by the Blacksburg exit with police cars whizzing by, not realizing what was going on--and have only today gotten to really inform myself on what happened yesterday at VT.

I ache. I think that's probably the best way to describe what I'm feeling at the moment. Ache for those who were killed, those injured physically, those injured emotionally, their families, the community, God. I ache that our Creator would watch as one of those made in the divine image would so distort that image. I ache that this young man somehow was known best as the "question mark kid," that he wouldn't or didn't know how to let people in, that people didn't know or wouldn't try to "get in."

I ache. I ache to be Christ's servant to the best of my ability, to minister to all those I meet so that should a question mark kid come across my path, I will been open to the Spirit so that God could use me to offer love. I'm in Atlanta in part to work on our own youth ministry, to strengthen what our community offers our kids. And I think, did this question mark kid have people like our kids do? Wonderful, warm, caring adults and families that will not let them slip through the cracks, not let them go unknown? Do we, with our warm and caring families, do even we have a kid who is a question mark, one we do not know, don't know how to know?

I ache and I pray. It's all I know to do.